


Ten Lashes

by Sed



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Choking, Corporal Punishment, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Torture, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Praise Kink, Rimming, Stranded, Threats of Violence, Touch-Starved, Trauma, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-01-31 12:24:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21446182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sed/pseuds/Sed
Summary: When Flynn oversteps during a mission at sea, Shaw is left with no choice but to think of a way to punish him. In the process he opens up some old wounds he wasn't expecting.
Relationships: Flynn Fairwind/Mathias Shaw
Comments: 201
Kudos: 219





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I really don't need a third WIP but I don't _not_ need one, either.
> 
> Please note, this fic may be updated to include more serious tags at a later date. I will warn you at the start of a new chapter if that happens.

“Come _on_, mate, it’s not like I was stealing it! I was—” Fairwind cast about for some better excuse. One that might actually satisfy Shaw. He held his arms out and said, “I was only having a look!”

That definitely wasn’t going to do it.

Lowering his voice so that only the spymaster could hear, he added more solemnly, “You’ve got my word on this, Shaw.”

The rest of the crew were watching as the confrontation unfolded. Shaw held the item in question in his hand, contained within a small, rather unremarkable leather pouch. As always, he considered the matter very carefully before making his decision.

For the second time in as many months, Flynn Fairwind had accompanied Shaw on behalf of the Alliance, undertaking a dangerous mission into enemy territory. Their objective had been far simpler this time, which was no great surprise; raiding a decrepit old loa temple—even one riddled with traps—was nothing at all like breaking into the Zandalari treasury. A shambling monstrosity birthed by troll magics was the worst they’d had to deal with, and Fairwind himself had dispatched the creature with relative ease once Shaw was able to destroy the source of its power. Nevertheless, the prize their efforts had won them was significant. Perhaps enough to shift the balance once and for all.

Fairwind had waited an entire day and half the night to sneak away and _take a peek_, as he put it. Now it was on Shaw to deliver a punishment that would suit his crime, and leave no question as to the order of things on his ship. If they had been sailing aboard a 7th Legion vessel he might not have felt it necessary to come down on Fairwind with both boots, but they weren’t, and it couldn’t be helped now.

As for his reassurances… While Fairwind’s word was more or less meaningless, Shaw knew he wouldn’t have actually stolen the artifact. After all, he had risked his life to retrieve it, and if he had wanted to steal it there were much better opportunities to do so and slip away without being caught. Opportunities that didn’t include very obviously breaking into the captain’s cabin and forcing the lock on the safe inside.

Unfortunately for Fairwind, the reminder of just how egregiously he had violated Shaw’s trust stoked the spymaster’s anger back to something much more like fury, and he grimaced to hide it. Maybe a harsh punishment was what it would take to finally make Fairwind understand how things were going to be. How they _had_ to be.

“Ten lashes,” Shaw announced. He wanted them to hear it in the rigging. “And a night in quarters.”

“Ten?!” Fairwind exclaimed. He ran a hand down his face, drawing it over the point of his chin and twisting the hair between his fingertips. “Look, I know you’ve got to do something about this, but—”

“You’re mistaken,” Shaw interrupted smoothly. “I _want_ to do something about it. It seems you’ve been laboring under a false assumption, Mister Fairwind, and I intend to correct you.”

For a refreshing change of pace, Fairwind didn’t object a second time. Shaw couldn’t help but wonder how often he’d received some form of corporal punishment that he would so easily accept receiving lashes for a broken lock. Despite his anger, the thought didn’t sit well with him.

Fairwind’s face remained impassive and drawn, his hair blown about him by the wind as he stared into Shaw’s eyes.

Damn him.

He knew Fairwind wasn’t a thief. The man could be a devilishly clever, silver-tongued miscreant at times, but he knew where the line was and he knew when not to cross it. His curiosity might have gotten the better of him, and Shaw could hardly claim he didn’t expect as much. But he’d been caught, and worse still, everyone knew. It put Shaw in the unfortunate position of having to make an example of him. For that one moment as he pronounced the sentence he had even felt righteously justified in doing so. Though, deep down even he could admit really didn’t want to—or need to, for that matter. A stern lecture and a few well-placed stretches of uncomfortable silence probably would have been enough.

Fairwind finally blinked and turned away, his empty gaze cast out over the endless expanse of black around them. All of the fight seemed to have gone out of him, and it was wrong. Shaw didn’t want to see him like this; he wanted him full of swagger and nerve, remarking endlessly on every thought that crossed his mind, and unafraid of the consequences.

Unafraid because, at least when it came to Shaw, he’d likely never thought _these_ might be the consequences.

Shaw hadn’t really wanted or intended to cause him serious harm. He knew how to hold back, and he had every intention of doing so. But he could see it now, in the dull blue-green of his shadowed eyes, that Fairwind had no such expectations. He truly thought Shaw would hurt him. _Really_ hurt him.

The thought pushed all the air from Shaw’s lungs in a rush, and in a very rare moment of indecision he realized he could not in good conscience go through with the punishment. Not the way he’d intended to, anyway. Certainly not out on deck, in front of so many eyes eager to see a man suffer.

“In my cabin, Fairwind.” A general murmur met the order, and he glared at the sailors in the rigging, hanging over the rails of the forecastle, and gathered about on the deck. “I think you all have something better to be doing, don’t you? Like sailing this vessel back to Boralus?”

They jumped at once, like startled cats. Suddenly the ship was alive with activity. Despite that, he was certain not one of them missed so much as a word that passed between the two men left standing in the center of the deck.

“Right. Let’s go,” Shaw said. He turned and started for the door that would lead them belowdecks. When he realized Fairwind wasn’t following, he stopped and looked back over his shoulder to see what was keeping him. Not that he didn’t have some idea.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Fairwind asked.

Shaw was confused for a moment, but only a moment; a _whip_, he realized with disturbing clarity. Fairwind was waiting for it, already anticipating his punishment and clearly livid that he would be forced to endure it. Reminding Shaw that he would need the whip to deliver those lashes was probably his way of exerting control over the situation. Or else he was simply too angry to think clearly. Shaw knew he needed to get them both inside before it got any worse.

“Your concern right now is being obedient, Fairwind. But since you asked,” he added casually, “I’ve got the proper tools to punish you in my cabin. I suggest you follow me there.”

Fairwind hesitated, but at last he relented, picking his feet up off the deck with a muttered curse. He marched after Shaw, following him into the shadowy interior of the ship. The captain’s cabin was locked again, would be for the rest of the voyage, though this time Shaw had every intention of keeping the artifact on his person until he handed it to Wyrmbane. He unlocked the door and let it swing on its hinge in the rolling trough of a wave. When it stopped he pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped inside, Fairwind on his heels the whole time.

“If you need a drink I’m afraid I don’t—” He turned around to find Fairwind already working to divest himself of his long coat and shirt. The latter was up around his shoulders before he apparently realized Shaw had stopped speaking.

“Apologies, _sir_,” Fairwind said, lowering it again. He had a dark scowl on his face, matched only by the fury in his eyes. “Would you prefer I left it on? You could leave it in bloody tatters on my back if you wanted. Make a real show of your handiwork.”

“Your insubordination is noted,” Shaw said, “Your melodrama, however, is not required.” He poured himself some water from a decanter and used the glass to gesture to the door. “Lock it again, if you don’t mind.”

“Certain you don’t want to leave it open? They’ll hear better that way.”

Shaw was quickly approaching the limit of his patience. He set the glass down on the sideboard with more force than was strictly necessary, making a loud sound in the small cabin. With a there-and-gone glare for Fairwind, he stomped over to shut the door himself. When he slid the bolt into place it made an audible, heavy _thunk_ against the wood, and from the corner of his eye he caught sight of Fairwind going slightly pale.

He really did not like that.

Rounding on Fairwind, he asked, “What sort of man do you imagine I am, Captain?” It was the first time he had referred to the pirate by his self-appointed title since they boarded the ship. He refused to let the man claim it while they were at sea; this was Shaw’s vessel, by order of both the king and the lord admiral, and it would remain so until such time as they sailed back to port with their prize safely in hand. He had no intention of leaving any doubts as to who commanded the men aboard. All of them.

“A decent question,” Fairwind returned. He was making an attempt to sound flippant, but Shaw could hear the slight quaver that undercut the bluster. “At the moment I imagine you’re the sort who would relish an opportunity to make good on a grudge. I knew you never liked me, but this is a bit far even for you.”

Shaw eyed him coolly. “You’re mistaken yet again.”

“Am I? You really think _ten_ lashes is a fair trade for sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“You’re mistaken,” Shaw said slowly, “for assuming this is about some sort of grudge.” He poured another glass of water and offered it to Fairwind. “For thinking I don’t like you.”

Fairwind crossed his arms. His snort and the eyeroll that accompanied it said more than any words might have done.

“Have I ever struck you as a liar?” Shaw asked.

Fairwind stared at him, and Shaw could see he was struggling to deny the truth. Finally his shoulders slumped and he breathed out a defeated sigh. “No,” he admitted. “But I never thought you cruel, either.” Most men might have taken that as a challenge, but Shaw knew it for what it really was: a last-ditch plea for mercy. Made without ever uttering a single word that might wound his own pride. Fairwind really wasn’t a fool, even if he _had_ gotten it all wrong this time.

“Do you see a whip?” Shaw asked.

Fairwind seemed puzzled by the question. “Pardon?”

“Do you see a whip in my hand, Captain Fairwind? Am I reaching for one?” He tried to smile, but had a feeling it didn’t quite hit the mark. “For such a clever man, it seems you can be rather… unobservant,” he muttered into his own drink.

Distracted now by the abrupt shift in tone, and the apparent upending of his expectations, Fairwind reached blindly for the offered glass. His eyes were still locked on Shaw’s, his wind-weathered brow furrowed in confusion. “What is this, then?”

“Water. I don’t keep liquor at sea.”

Fairwind frowned at him. “If you don’t mind, my nerves are a bit shot at the moment.”

“I’m afraid I can’t offer you anything stronger.” Shaw knew what he was really getting at, of course, but it was too satisfying not to toy with him a little longer. He _had_ broken into the cabin, after all. _And_ the safe.

“You’re—you’re an infuriating man, you know that? Get on with it, whatever it is. What’s my punishment?”

The leather pouch was still weighing down one of his pockets. Shaw fished it out and tossed it onto the sideboard with a _thunk_. “Enduring half an hour in here with me isn’t enough?”

Fairwind reeled back. “You’re not going to do anything? Outside you said—”

“I shouldn’t have to tell you how important it is that a ship’s crew has no cause to question what their captain might do in the event of disobedience.”

Fairwind visibly relaxed then, but not all at once; his shoulders slumped and he breathed out his relief, turning around and sitting heavily on the edge of Shaw’s bed. The only real bed to speak of on the ship, meant for an actual captain. It was only slightly larger than his bunk aboard the _Wind’s Redemption_, and he wasn’t sure he liked that. Too much room. He couldn’t ever seem to get comfortable.

“You really thought I would enjoy hurting you?” he asked.

Fairwind’s look was answer enough. More than.

“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.” He sat down on the other corner of the bed, less than an arm’s length from Fairwind. “I might have made a good show of it.” If he had gone through with it at all. The part of him that had been so angry he’d considered such a punishment fair had long since faded. In its place only Shaw, and his guilt, remained. He ran a hand through his hair to brush back a few stray locks. “I am not given to wanton cruelty, Captain. Try to remember that.”

“For next time?” Fairwind asked. There was a hint of his usual smirk playing at the corners of his mouth, and Shaw found himself unexpectedly relieved to see it there.

“_Next time_ I’d like to think you might exercise a bit more discretion.” He gestured to the pouch lying atop the sideboard. “You could have just asked to see it, you know.”

Fairwind scoffed, obviously entertained by the very notion. “Where’s the fun in that?” he said.

“You really thought this was fun?”

That put an end to his amusement, and the smile dropped from his face like it was attached to an anchor. He searched his hands for whatever it was he wanted to say, eventually landing on, “I probably don’t need to tell you that this wouldn’t have been my first time. Learned the hard way that it’s easier not to fight it. Doesn’t make it any less galling, of course.”

Shaw was quiet for a moment. He was starting to wish he had something stronger than water in his hand. “You’ve been whipped before.”

Fairwind huffed something like a laugh. “You might say that.”

It didn’t strike Shaw as the sort of punishment one grew accustomed to, no matter how many times it was done. “I could have chosen something different. Something more… appropriate. I—” It wasn’t in his nature to second guess himself, but he was feeling uncharacteristically ashamed of his overreaction. Even if he had never intended for it to be carried out cruelly. Fairwind had broken the rules, he had openly flaunted Shaw’s command, but he wasn’t a problem.

That he could admit as much, even to himself, came as a surprise.

“I apologize,” he said at last.

Although Fairwind’s eyebrows all but crawled to the top of his forehead, he nevertheless managed to compose himself swiftly. Politely hiding a cough behind his hand, he said, “It’s a better option than most. Can’t deny a man food and drink at sea, and we’ve no real brig to speak of aboard this vessel. I would hope you might save keelhauling for something truly heinous.”

“Keelhauling?”

“Oh, mate, you really are new at this.” Fairwind shot him an affectionate but slightly condescending smile. “It’s when you tie a rope around a man and toss him overboard—”

“That’s more than enough information, thank you. I can… extrapolate the rest from context.”

Fairwind snickered, but thankfully he made no attempt to continue despite Shaw’s objections. A comfortable silence settled over the cabin after that, and Shaw finished the last of his water.

“Have you ever…?”

“That’s—” Shaw began. He took his time, finally settling on, “That's confidential, Captain.” Which, he supposed, was an answer itself. It was also the only answer he would ever give.

Fairwind nodded slowly. “So, no alcohol while at sea? You might find yourself facing a mutiny just for that, you know.”

“There are barrels down in the hold. I don’t keep any up here.”

“No easy way to blame your mistakes on the drink, I suppose?”

Shaw smirked. “No temptation to try.”

Fairwind watched him for a moment, and Shaw found himself uncharacteristically bereft of anything to say, searching for ways to fill the awkward space that seemed to have formed between them. At least not until Fairwind filled it with _himself_. He leaned in and pressed his lips—dry and chapped from the wind, rougher than any lips Shaw had ever kissed—to Shaw’s. He made no attempt to press for more, thought it wouldn’t have come as a surprise if he had, but he didn’t pull back again, either. Not even when Shaw failed to reciprocate.

“You should leave,” Shaw said quietly.

Fairwind abruptly broke the kiss. His eyes were too wide, and the flush of his cheeks stood out against his tanned skin, gone pale once more in the face of Shaw’s rejection. Was it embarrassment he felt, Shaw wondered, or fear?

Did it matter?

“Now.”

“Right.” Fairwind stood. He seemed to have forgotten how his own legs worked, and remained rooted to the spot. “Right,” he repeated. “That was a—can we maybe forget that happened? No? Probably not, I’d imagine. I didn’t—” He ran a hand through his hair, and his callused fingers became tangled in the back. He shook them free with a grimace. “I’m not sure why I did that, to be perfectly honest. This is where a drink might’ve come in handy,” he laughed.

Shaw wouldn’t look at him. He couldn’t.

“I’ll go,” Fairwind said. And after only a moment more of awkward, uncomfortable shuffling, he finally did.

After he was gone, when the only sound in the cabin was the distant lap of the waves against the hull, Shaw slowly pressed a hand to his own mouth and held it there.

He didn’t leave his cabin for the rest of the night.


	2. Chapter 2

Fairwind avoided Shaw the next day, and the day after that. Strange how such a small ship could become so very large when one man didn’t want to run into another. It wasn’t that Shaw had been looking for him, at least not at first, but he found himself unconsciously scanning the deck when he stepped outside. Yet Fairwind was never among the rest of the crew. Shaw was beginning to suspect the pirate knew of some small hideaway within the ship, and had stowed himself there for the remainder of the voyage. A part of him hoped that might be so.

Another part was anxious to see him again. Not eager, but still anxious. He couldn’t exactly say why.

But Fairwind’s absence did have a noticeable effect on the crew. They seemed to have taken it as an indicator of Shaw’s firm hand as a captain, and as a result they jumped to obey his every order. Even the most mundane suggestions yielded instant results. He was beginning to suspect that Fairwind had told them some elaborate lie regarding what, exactly, had happened in that cabin once the door was closed. A theory he might have been able to confirm if he could only _find_ the man.

It was the third night absent Fairwind’s raucous storytelling during the evening meal, and Shaw was beginning to grow weary of the game he hadn’t ever asked to play. The sea was calm, and the weather fair, and Shaw had ordered the cook to serve dinner out on deck. If Fairwind wanted to eat, he would have to show himself. It wasn’t the most honest method of flushing him out, but if it worked, that was really all that mattered.

Sure enough, a short time into the meal Shaw caught sight of a familiar figure slinking through the shadows down on deck. He was watching from his own dark perch, crouched just outside of a pool of light cast by one of the ship’s lanterns. That he had to go to such extremes only galled him as much as the sheer inconvenience of it tried his patience.

Fairwind took his time. He moved slowly, for once displaying some skill as a trained rogue, rather than simply blundering his way through everything at top speed and high volume. When he reached the food he was quick about his task. He turned his back on Shaw’s unseen hiding place, and that was when the spymaster made his move.

“A bit late for supper,” Shaw remarked casually as he landed on the deck beside him. Too casual to be the passing remark it might seem to anyone else.

Fairwind stiffened and stopped in place. He still had one foot forward, caught mid-stride by Shaw’s appearance. He cleared his throat. “Stew’s better at the bottom of the pot,” he returned. “For the sake of curiosity, where were you?”

“I’m sure you would like to know.”

“Well, that _is_ why I asked.” Fairwind relaxed his posture and turned to face Shaw. He seemed to believe that feigning an ease he clearly didn’t feel would be enough to deter any uncomfortable questions.

Unfortunately for him, everything about Shaw’s questions would be uncomfortable—for both of them.

“Why don’t you join me in my cabin,” Shaw said. Not a request, but Fairwind still took a moment to consider it as though it was.

He took a bite of the stew and chewed slowly before answering. “If it’s all the same to you—”

“It’s not. Let’s go.”

Shaw entered the captain’s cabin with Fairwind once more striding in sullenly on his heels. He set the bowl of stew on the sideboard and crossed his arms; a classic defensive posture that did not go unnoticed.

“You kissed me,” Shaw said once the door was closed and the bolt in place. He had originally intended to lead up to the matter of the kiss, but now that he’d said it he couldn’t exactly take it back. Just as well; there was no sense in allowing Fairwind the opportunity to deny its significance, or concoct some elaborate smokescreen to avoid discussing what had happened.

When Fairwind didn’t reply, Shaw pushed harder. “Why?”

“That seems like a rather silly question.”

“Not to me.”

“You know, you might’ve asked when you had me there on the end of that bed, instead of so unceremoniously giving me the boot. What’s got you curious now?” Fairwind asked.

“I’ve been preoccupied,” Shaw said. It was a half-truth, anyway; that he was preoccupied by the very subject they were discussing didn’t require mentioning. “So?”

Fairwind retrieved his bowl of stew and found a place to sit at the small desk along the cabin wall. Moonlight was streaming in through the colored glass, bathing him in a wash of blue. He ate, and Shaw had a feeling he was considering how to answer. Possibly considering how to do so without finding himself facing far worse than a lashing.

Shrugging one shoulder, he said, “It seemed like a thing to do.”

Shaw blinked several times. “Pardon?”

“The mood, the atmosphere, the—I don’t know!” he growled. “Call it what you will.” Fairwind stood and dropped his spoon back into the bowl. He’d barely touched the stew. “If that’s all, Master Shaw,” he said with a great deal of finality.

Shaw could hardly think of a response to that, and he had no convenient excuse to stop Fairwind from leaving. Not without making a fool of himself first. His mind was reeling and regret tugged at him like a hook. He watched Fairwind’s back as he marched from the cabin. The ship pitched and the door slammed shut behind him; a rather fitting end to what hardly counted as an argument, but certainly could not be called a conversation.

All that effort, only to be left in worse sorts than he’d started.

  
Shaw didn’t sleep that night. He felt himself slipping a few times, lulled by the pull of exhaustion from the day’s work, but his mind would inevitably wander back to Fairwind. Back to the kiss that was barely a kiss, and the confessions they hadn’t quite shared. He was not a man accustomed to tossing and turning in his bed. Certainly not because of something so juvenile and frankly irrelevant to his mission and his duty. Unfortunately, he was wholly unprepared to handle the consequences as a result. His fatigue quickly gave way to a foul mood that settled over the ship like a fog, and as he lay awake in bed the following evening he realized something had to be done. He could not captain a ship without rest. Not even one that seemed to sail itself, for all that the crew had taken it upon themselves to see them safely back to port with or without Shaw’s direction.

He knew there was a cask of brandy in the hold. Left over from a previous voyage, he assumed, or perhaps part of the customary provisions. Shaw himself certainly hadn’t directed anyone to bring it aboard. Together along with a few barrels of some other common swill, it took up what he felt was valuable space that could be better utilized for food or water. Still, it was there, and under duress it had its purposes. This seemed to be one such occasion.

Several glasses later saw him feeling pleasantly fuzzy, and with any luck, ready to sleep. His mind was too full of the brandy’s sweet song to plague him with reminders of Flynn Fairwind’s strange kiss. He lay back in the bed in a pair of soft linen pants, warm inside and out, and closed his eyes.

  
He was pulled from sleep by the sound of shouting voices. Someone was pounding on his door, rattling the walls of his skull. The room was swimming around him, and his head throbbed with a nauseous lurch to the side of the bed. Perhaps, he reflected dazedly, drinking himself to sleep hadn’t been the wisest choice.

The door slammed open, hitting the wall of the cabin with a crack, and Shaw hefted himself as upright as he could manage. He clutched at his head, and then other hands clutched at _him_, and in the rush of lamplight and whirling shadows he somehow found himself out on deck, kneeling in the pouring rain. His pants clung to his legs, cold and uncomfortable where they were bunched around his knees, and his hair was plastered to his face. Someone was still yelling. He wanted to tell them to shut up.

He spotted Fairwind through the relentless rain. It rolled into his eyes and dripped into his open mouth and at some point he realized whatever was happening was very, very wrong. He was in danger, and so was Fairwind. He tried to wrench himself free of whatever was holding him—hands, he thought. Whoever had pulled him from his cabin was still tightly clutching his arms and shoulders, and from where he was sitting it seemed they weren’t having much trouble keeping him down. Across the deck Fairwind was struggling, and doing a much better job of it, too.

“Shaw!” he shouted, the sound disappearing into the lazy roll of thunder overhead.

Shaw tried to focus. He blinked away the rain that blurred his vision. He had weapons—a _lot_ of weapons. They were in his armor, of course, but he’d left that behind in the cabin. It seemed so far away from where he was now.

“Shaw, look at me!”

They had Fairwind pinned to the deck on his stomach. His nose was bleeding, leaving a dark smear across his cheek that was quickly washed away by the rain.

“Tides, man, are you _drunk?!_” Fairwind demanded furiously. He managed to wrest one arm away from his captors, but was quickly prevented from gaining the other.

Shaw huffed indignantly, though he knew he deserved Fairwind’s scorn. He opened his mouth to apologize when a dark figure stepped between them, blocking his view of Fairwind and the light of the ship’s lanterns.

“Small mercy for you,” the figure said, “that you’re half-drowned by your own hand already.”

Fairwind started shouting again, but Shaw couldn’t make out what he was saying. “This is… a mutiny?” Shaw asked, struggling to speak and rightfully ashamed of himself for it.

“Mutiny is an ugly word, Captain Shaw.”

His first impulse was to remind him that Fairwind was the captain, but he wasn’t. Not today, not aboard this ship. Shaw was the captain. It was his mission. His plan. They had hired a crew that included a minimal complement of Alliance soldiers, along with Shaw and Fairwind, who had been retained for both his sailing experience and more questionable expertise. But only Fairwind was here, which meant—

“My men,” Shaw groaned. He knew the answer even before the figure, sneering down at him through the dark, confirmed his fears.

The figure—the lead mutineer, it seemed—crouched down in front of him. “Dead before they hit the water.”

There had been twelve—no, fifteen Alliance soldiers aboard. Fifteen men dead. All because he had allowed himself to become swept up in Fairwind’s nonsense. Fifteen more souls on his conscience, and weighted against his own. They were almost home. “What are you going to do?” he asked. Every word sent drops of rain spattering off his lips. He no longer cared that he couldn’t see; there wasn’t enough light to make out details, and he didn’t have much hope of using them to his benefit, anyway.

“You and your _friend_ here are going for a little swim.” The mutineer stood and shouted at someone to bring him rope. Shaw was abruptly reminded of his conversation with Fairwind about keelhauling, and a shiver ran the length of his body. Seemed strange that he could be any colder than he was already.

“Morris you slimy son of a siren!” Fairwind roared. He was silenced with a kick to the ribs, and anything else he might have said only came out as a breathless wheeze.

Without registering that he had even made the decision to move, Shaw suddenly hauled himself to his feet. He shouldered into whoever was holding him, sending the traitor to the deck with a headbutt that nearly turned out to be his own undoing as well. Pain exploded in his skull like Midsummer fireworks. His vision blurred even without the rain, and he stumbled back several steps, colliding with something hard and pitching backwards.

Right into the water.

  
The next time he woke, it was to light, pain, and a heaving in his stomach that would not be quelled by a mere grimace and his usual determination. He rolled over and vomited, and the reminder of his brandy-soaked attempt to save himself and Fairwind came back to him with a horrified groan.

He was lying in sand. When the rush of blood in his ears finally subsided he realized he was on a beach. Those details together made some sense, but not how he had managed to get there.

Sitting up seemed prudent, but after halfheartedly burying his shame in the sand beside him, he didn’t think he had the strength to rise. Instead he lay there, partly shaded by palm trees swaying high above, contemplating the blinding pain in his skull and what he would give to ease it.

“I see you’re awake,” he heard a familiar voice say. It did not sound happy.

“Fairwind,” he croaked, ignoring the relief that swept over him. His throat was sticky, and speaking was difficult. He felt like meat that had been salted and dried.

“Not so fair at the moment,” Fairwind muttered. He sat down heavily on the sand. “I hope you like coconuts and crabs. I’m still working on fresh water.”

At the mere mention of water his whole body seemed to cry out for it in one powerful and uncomfortable pang, and he rolled himself onto his other side to face Fairwind. “Need some.”

“I figured as much. I’ve got a theory there’s a spring somewhere around here. Found some tracks that suggest we’re not the only wildlife on this little spit. I was going to have a look around once I was sure you hadn’t expired.”

“If I had?”

Fairwind grinned and mimed a carving motion. “Waste not, want not.”

“You’re disgusting.”

Fairwind laughed. He deposited half of a coconut shell on the sand beside Shaw and stood up, brushing the sand from his clothes.

It was only then that Shaw realized he was wearing nothing more than the pair of linen pants he’d worn to bed. “Give me your shirt,” he said.

“Only have the one, I’m afraid.”

“Your coat.”

Fairwind made a gesture to indicate that what was there was the whole of him. “A tragic sacrifice to the sea,” he said. “Lost it trying to save you from a rum-soaked, watery grave.”

“Brandy,” Shaw corrected offhandedly. Had Fairwind jumped in after him? No, it was more likely he had been thrown overboard right after Shaw tipped himself in like a fool. He recalled the lead mutineer—Morris?—calling for rope. “You were tied up.”

“Not the wisest choice to tie a sailor with a sailor’s knot,” Fairwind said.

Like his earlier relief, Shaw chose to ignore the heavy feeling that settled in his chest at the thought of Fairwind, bound at the wrists, tossed into the endless black of the sea in the midst of a storm. He turned back to the palms that danced gently overhead. “I suppose I owe you thanks.”

“Oh, I’ll collect your gratitude in due time, Spymaster. Right now I’m off to chart our little island home, and hopefully secure what we need to survive.”

Shaw shot up from the sand and instantly regretted it; his head throbbed angrily, and he fell back with a sound that he was too miserable to be ashamed of at the moment. “What do you mean, _island?_” he asked, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“An island, Master Shaw. Little dollop of land in the middle of the big blue ocean?” Fairwind made a gesture that probably only made sense to him and said, “I’d spotted it from the crow’s nest right before they jumped me and dragged you out on deck in your knickers. If I’m being honest, which is rare, so you should definitely take note, it was only dumb luck we managed to make it here through that storm. I’m a strong swimmer, but they weren’t gentle when they put me over the side.”

“Pants,” was all Shaw could think to say.

“Sorry?”

“They’re pants.” He didn’t know why it mattered, but in that moment, with the sun and the sand and his own body making a serious effort to kill him from the inside out, he latched onto the point and refused to let go.

“Right,” Fairwind agreed easily—too easily. “Well, you and your _pants_ should wait here. I shouldn’t be gone long.”

“And if we aren’t alone?”

Fairwind seemed to consider that for a moment. “Before last night I’d have believed you could kill a man with a sour look and a bit of disapproving silence.”

Shaw glared at him from beneath his palms.

He continued with a shrug. “Well, I’m sorry to say, all my pointiest personal effects went into the drink along with my coat. I didn’t have anything else on me at the time, what with not expecting a full-on mutiny less than two days from home.” He put his hands on his hips. “Come to think of it, I was rather surprised you didn’t pull a dagger or twelve the moment they came through the door. What happened there?”

“I was _asleep_.” And drunk, but neither of them needed to be reminded of that.

Fairwind only arched one auburn brow at him, and Shaw sighed. “Under better circumstances they wouldn’t have had such an easy time getting the drop on me. I learned that lesson the hard way.”

“Evidently not.”

Shaw snapped, “This was a _one-time_ mistake.”

Fairwind laughed bitterly at his objection—or maybe that was only the way Shaw wanted to hear it—and indicated the ocean around them, the island, and finally Shaw himself. “For both our sakes,” he said, “let’s hope that’s not the case, and you get the chance to make a few more.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Well, we’re set for water, at least.” Fairwind sighed as he dropped himself down onto the fallen trunk of a palm tree.

Shaw was sitting up under the shade of some low-hanging leaves, not far from where Fairwind had dragged him from the water and deposited him in a salty heap. He had his knees drawn up as far as they would go, arms resting atop them as he rubbed his temples with his fingertips. His headache had not eased much, even with the timely application of a coconut shell full of fresh water. In fact, just drinking it had nearly caused him to empty his stomach for a second time. To make matters worse, the potent combination of nausea and unrelenting pain had stirred up certain memories that were better left forgotten, putting him in a rather foul mood. All told it was not shaping up to be the best morning of his life.

He squinted up at the sun. Was it even morning anymore?

Fairwind continued, oblivious to Shaw’s misery. “I’ll fashion a spear, catch us something to eat. You like fish?” he asked.

Shaw rolled his head to the side and eyed Fairwind with a withering glare. “Do you ever stop talking?”

That only earned him a rude snort. “Is our surly lush having a bit of trouble drying out?” Fairwind chuckled. “That’ll teach you not to drown your sorrows at the bottom of a barrel.”

Shaw only continued to glare at him, until Fairwind eventually found an excuse to look away. He pointed out to sea. “Reckon we might catch a trade ship passing by, barter our way back to Boralus. Our route was fairly standard, and it took us well within sight of this island. I’ll get a fire going before nightfall. Any barrelman worth his salt should be able to spot it.” He slapped his hands down on his thighs, and the sound made Shaw jump. “If you feel up to it, you might even consider helping.”

“You can build a fire on your own,” Shaw muttered into the hollow between his knees. Kneading the back of his head wasn’t doing much more than massaging his temples had.

“Build a fire, find fresh water, catch our food. Do you intend to do anything to help during this little island getaway of ours?”

“It is not a _getaway,_” Shaw growled through his clenched teeth.

“I beg to differ. I’d say we were rather lucky to get away at all.” Fairwind abruptly broke into laughter at his own insufferable joke, and nearly fell onto his back in the sand for it. Shaw had to fight the urge to tackle him and forcibly shut him up. Instead he opted for a sneer and a warning snarl that he thought might have made a druid proud.

“Give me an hour or so to explore some more of the island,” Fairwind said as he righted himself in his seat. He was still chuckling like an obnoxious fool. “I’ll see if I can’t come up with a remedy for that hangover of yours.”

Shaw eyed him venomously. “You’re an alchemist now?”

Fairwind shook his head and grinned. His look was a little too knowing for Shaw’s tastes. “Just a man well versed in the art of overdoing it, Spymaster.”

“I’m glad to see you’re enjoying this.”

“Well, we can’t have _two_ miserable bastards on one island, and you’ve clearly already staked your claim there. Anyway, it won’t do us any good to sit around bemoaning our wretched fate together. Might as well get something done while we’ve got the daylight on our side.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

He caught the slight shake of Fairwind’s head as he shook the sand from his clothes and set out from their little camp. A part of him was happy to see him go. A rather large part, in fact.

Another part of him, smaller but no less insistent, wished he could go with him. Not out of any misplaced sense of concern or sentiment, of course, but because he truly hated the thought of being so useless. In fact, if not for his head currently undergoing its own small Cataclysm, he might have insisted on tagging along. And didn’t _that_ gall him. Second string to a pirate playing house on an uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean. Dependent on the man for everything from water to food to, if luck and the Light were on their side, eventual rescue.

None of which helped his headache _at all_.

  
Fairwind returned within the hour, as promised. He came bearing arms full of palm detritus and what Shaw took to be the remnants of other vegetation unfortunate enough to have washed up and taken root on the small spit of land. He deposited it in a heap at Shaw’s feet and held both hands out toward the pile with a toothy grin.

“And what, exactly, do you expect me to do with this?” Shaw demanded miserably. Fairwind’s incomprehensible preening reminded him of a very large crow.

“Thought you might have a use for some of it.”

Shaw pushed the pile away with one bare foot. He only succeeded in shifting the sand, leaving the leaves and various unidentifiable fibers more or less where they had fallen. “You thought wrong,” he said.

“You could try to show a little gratitude, you know,” Fairwind abruptly snapped. It was the first time he had dropped his cheerful facade since coming ashore. “I saved your miserable life, the least you could do is pretend to be thankful for it!”

Shaw’s head throbbed along with the rise of Fairwind’s voice. He grimaced and tried to glare up at the sun-limned silhouette of the man standing over him. “The least I could do, Captain?” he sneered. In defiance of the shrieking pain playing havoc with his skull and the ache of what he suspected to be every single muscle in his body, Shaw forced himself to stand. “The _least_ I could do is graciously allow you to begin making amends for your mistakes by seeing to our needs if we’re to survive here.” He stepped closer. “The _least_ I could do is sit back and hope we won’t starve, or die of thirst, or come under attack by wild animals in our sleep because _you_ got us stranded on this Light-forsaken island!”

Fairwind reeled back as though he’d been struck, and his jaw dropped open, gracelessly working in silence as he gawked at Shaw. When he finally found the right words they were, as Shaw had expected, furious. “Pardon me?” he said, cupping a hand behind his ear. “_I_ did what? You might want to run that by me again, mate, because I’ve fallen a little behind.”

“You know damn well what you did. If you hadn’t kissed—”

“Oh, no,” Fairwind put his hands up in warning. “No. Don’t you _dare_ say it, Shaw.”

“If you hadn’t _kissed me,_” Shaw said anyway, hissing the words as though someone else might overhear, “_none of this_ would have happened! I wouldn’t have spent days trying to hunt you down for an explanation, or been so desperate to sleep that I’d leave myself vulnerable, and end up taken by surprise in the middle of the night by my own crew! I wouldn’t be here, on this island, _trapped_ with _you!_”

Under better circumstances, he would have seen the right hook coming.

He stumbled back, clutching his jaw, the throbbing in his head now a wailing, clawing pain that seemed to have grown teeth. His neck sang in protest at the sudden shock that twisted it to the right, and his knees buckled. But Mathias Shaw had not spent a lifetime learning how to keep himself alive just to be taken down in the sand by some freebooter in a huff. He launched himself across the leaf pile at Fairwind, catching him off guard as he barreled into his middle with both arms around his back. Fairwind made an undignified sound as he fell to the sand with Shaw atop him.

Most of what happened after that was a blur. Shaw knew he threw a few punches, and some even connected. In turn he felt more than one blow land wherever Fairwind could reach. There was a single kick that caught him in the side of the hip, and he answered with a knee to what he’d thought was Fairwind’s groin, but produced a sound more like a startled wheeze. At some point he bit Fairwind. Not his proudest moment. It earned him an open-palmed slap to the side of the head that left his left ear ringing.

The brawl was graceless, exhausting, and for all that they seemed barely able to actually damage one another, one of the more surprisingly painful experiences of Shaw’s life. If only because his own body punished him doubly for every blow either of them actually managed to land.

“You did this!” Shaw shouted at Fairwind, whose lumbering form was now crouched over him, trying to catch his arms. He had given up any effort to control his temper, and he flailed wildly, letting his anger spill out in every direction.

“So I poured the contents of that barrel down your throat, is that it?!” Fairwind demanded in return. He succeeded in securing one of Shaw’s arms, but it left him exposed to attack from the other, and he cursed several times as Shaw struck blindly over and over, trying to connect with whatever he could reach.

“It was a cask, you idiot!”

Fairwind abandoned his efforts to bring Shaw under control and rolled to the side, out of the way of his fist. Seizing the opportunity, Shaw promptly followed. He straddled Fairwind’s waist, and without even intending to found himself with one hand tangled in Fairwind’s hair, the other fisting the collar of his shirt. He lifted him and slammed him back down, and had they been on stone or even wood it might have actually mattered. But the sand only absorbed the impact, making his short-lived victory less than satisfying.

“Same bloody thing!” Fairwind roared. He shot up from the sand and cracked his forehead against Shaw’s, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs and misspent rage, landing at opposite ends of each other.

Shaw lay there for what might have been several minutes, fighting to catch his breath. His head felt like it was splitting open and his ear ached where Fairwind had slapped him, to say nothing of the other aches and pains—new and lingering—that were loudly making themselves known. At the other end of his feet he could hear the occasional unhappy huff.

“That… escalated quickly,” Fairwind complained.

“Your fault,” Shaw grunted.

“Oh, come off it, you self-important prick!” Fairwind kicked out, showering Shaw with a small wave of sand. Fortunately most of it pooled in the hollow of his throat, and he absently wiped it away. “If you weren’t so caught up in your own silly panic, overwrought from something as simple and harmless as a bloody _kiss,_ none of this would have happened!” He sat up on his elbows. “What, you get a peck on the cheek from an orc and fall to pieces? Is that it, Spymaster? Is your shameful weakness something as simple as a little _affection?_” He fell back again with a grunt. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re so tight-laced no one would ever uncover how to take you down.”

“We can’t all wear our weakness on our sleeve,” Shaw sneered. He felt Fairwind’s leg against his and lashed out violently with his knee. “At least I’m not afraid of a damned _whip,_ you _coward_.”

He expected something in return for his insult, maybe even another attack, but Fairwind had gone utterly silent. In the sudden stillness Shaw had a moment to consider whether or not that had been the wisest thing to say.

He received his answer when Fairwind abruptly shoved himself up from the sand and rose to his feet. He stalked off without a word, without so much as a look back over his shoulder, leaving Shaw to lie there in the sun, alone. Feeling like the fool he knew he was.

  
It was well after dark before Fairwind returned. Evening on their little island had brought with it a drop in temperature that only reminded Shaw of how exposed he really was, wearing nothing but a pair of linen pants. He had dug himself a shallow trench in the sand behind the fallen palm, hoping to block most of the cooler wind off the sea. Unfortunately, it did very little to actually keep him warm. He was lying on his side atop a makeshift bed of palm fronds when Fairwind’s shuffling footsteps announced his presence.

His body and his pride still smarting from their fight, Shaw muttered, “You were supposed to build a fire,” when Fairwind drew close enough to hear him. He knew it was petty, that it was only going to anger the pirate more, dig the knife a little deeper. He just couldn’t seem to help himself. While he had more or less recovered from his hangover, he now had a whole new host of aches to deal with, and those _were_ Fairwind’s fault. Mostly. Between that and the cold, his mood had not improved much since their fight.

He felt something heavy land on the other side of the palm. When he looked up he found a large, black mound of what looked to be fur, glistening wetly in the moonlight. The smell of blood assaulted him on the breeze.

“Dinner,” Fairwind announced.

It was a wild pig. Young, but enough to keep them both fed for at least a day or two. “You took that down on your own?” Shaw asked.

“No, I made some friends on the other side of the island,” Fairwind lied sarcastically. “Incidentally, they also think you’re a prick.” He threw a handmade spear down on the sand beside Shaw. It was red with blood to halfway down the haft.

“Impressive.”

“I don’t need your praise,” Fairwind muttered. Perhaps he hadn’t meant for Shaw to hear, but too many years of eavesdropping had sharpened the spy’s ears to those things that weren’t necessarily intended for him.

“How do you plan to skin it?” he asked, pretending to have missed the remark.

“I thought perhaps I’d use your razor-sharp wit, Spymaster. But in lieu of that, how about you do the honors? I’ll get a fire going so we can eat this and you can stop burrowing into the sand like a freshly molted krolusk.” Without waiting for a reply, Fairwind set about doing just that. He had the rough shape of a bonfire heap mostly built before Shaw thought to get up and actually do what he’d been told. An altogether strange turn of events. It seemed the day for such things, though.

Skinning an animal without a knife wasn’t the easiest task, but it wasn’t impossible, either. Shaw had been forced to manage far more difficult things in his life. With the worst of his hangover eased, and the wind from the ocean to chase away the heavy, metallic stink of blood, it really wasn’t so bad. He managed to put a few sharp stones and a stick or two to work and his own strength took care of the rest. It might have been faster if Fairwind had done it, but, if pressed to admit it, Shaw was feeling a bit contrite after his earlier comment about the whip.

He was just finishing up when Fairwind marched over and pulled the freshly skinned pig out of his hands.

“I wasn’t finished with that,” Shaw said.

“Looked finished to me.”

“Are you going to pout for the rest of the time it takes us to be rescued?” _Or die,_ he thought bitterly. The prospect of dying on an uncharted island with no one but Flynn Fairwind for company was less appealing than drowning. “Would you prefer if I apologized?”

Fairwind’s back was to him, but Shaw could see the sudden tension in his shoulders and neck. He was busy spitting the wild pig on his makeshift spear, and whatever he thought of Shaw’s offer, he kept it to himself.

They were both silent for a while after that. Shaw watched Fairwind work, watched his careful movements as he settled the pig over the fire to cook. There was an economy of movement about him that Shaw hadn’t noted before, and in the lull of the fire’s warmth it became mesmerizing. He continued to watch as Fairwind wandered down to the surf to wash his hands, suddenly conscious of the blood that had been ground into his own skin and under his fingernails from skinning the pig. When Fairwind returned to the fire, Shaw took his turn down at the water, and found that in the moonlight it was clear he had only managed to wash away some of the blood. Even scrubbing with sand didn’t seem to clear away the stains.

When he returned to the fire he stood and watched Fairwind, who had removed his boots and belt and set about shaking copious amounts of sand from both.

After a few minutes had passed, he said, “It was worse than you let on, I take it.”

Fairwind didn’t look up, but beneath the shaggy red hair that lined his mouth, he frowned.

“How many times?” Shaw pressed.

“Can’t imagine that’s any of your business, Spymaster.”

“I’m trying to understand.”

Fairwind’s head shot up and he glared at Shaw across the fire. “And just what’s there to understand, if I may ask? I’m a coward, you said it yourself. Stormwind’s finest has spoken, and that’s all there is to know. A coward and a thief.”

Shaw crossed his arms over his bare chest. “I never called you a thief.”

“A sentence of ten lashes begs to differ.”

“Lashes I didn’t deliver, if you recall,” Shaw pointed out angrily. “Mercy for which you never thanked me.” He regretted it almost the moment the words left his mouth. “I didn’t mean it like that, I—Fairwind, wait—”

Fairwind rose from the log and toed into his boots. He buckled his belt around his waist as he spoke. “It’s about a twenty minute walk northwest of here to a spring and a small pond. Don’t ask me where the spring is fed from, I’ve long since given up asking such questions, but neither of us has died so I assume it’s safe. I never encountered anything larger than this.” He pointed to the roasting pig. “You should be fine on your own.”

Shaw straightened up. He let his hands fall to his sides. “Where are you going?” he asked. He was unable to keep the worry from his voice, and it annoyed him.

Fairwind put his hands on his hips and tilted his head toward the sky. “Well, I lost my compass in the water, but based on the position of the stars and the direction of the wind, I’d say I’m going wherever you aren’t.”

“You can’t just _leave,_” Shaw insisted.

But he was leaving. And this time Shaw had a feeling he wasn’t coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I based Shaw's hangover on my experience the last time I got drunk.
> 
> There's a good reason it was the last time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have two chapters of this fic ready to post, but I thought I should wait until I had finished the new chapter of my _other_ big WIP to post more of this. Unfortunately I'm sort of stuck on that one, and the chapters are piling up, so here we are. My block is your gain.
> 
> This chapter is not very happy. Please keep that in mind.

As he’d predicted, the meat Fairwind had procured lasted him for the next two days. There might have been more if he hadn’t woken up on the third day to find the remainder beset by hungry scavengers. Small lizards, similar to those he had seen on Zandalar, only these seemed far less interested in making a meal of _him,_ as well. Or maybe they just knew better than to try. He considered catching and cooking a few, but then thought better of it; the lizards were small and scrawny, and mostly covered in spines. For all he knew they were poisonous, too.

It hardly made a difference, in the end. Though cooked until it was dry and salted, the meat was already starting to spoil, and he wasn’t sure he had the stomach for that anymore. Not after his recent misadventure, anyway. Instead he moved the pig downwind, and spent a quiet afternoon watching the crabs, lizards, and gulls feast on the remains. It was the only thing that passed for entertainment with Fairwind gone.

After venturing north to locate the spring, and finding no sign of Fairwind anywhere around the pond or surrounding forest, Shaw was forced to accept that he was truly alone. At least until they were rescued. He had no doubt that the wily pirate would come traipsing out onto the sand the moment a boat came ashore to retrieve them, if one ever did. It seemed that his earlier display of stealth aboard the ship had not been the extent of his abilities; Shaw was forced to concede that Fairwind, when pushed to it, could indeed become invisible. The only problem was that Shaw had in fact pushed him to it.

Lost anywhere else, alone as he was, he would have logically headed upland. There he would have found himself a safe place to bed down and stayed out of sight until rescue arrived. But being stranded on an island had forced him to remain by the shore, and the very thought of it made his skin crawl. For his own sake—and Fairwind’s—he had no choice but to stay out in the open, where, if he wasn’t waking up with crabs scuttling across his back, he was shouted awake by gulls. His position left him at the mercy of the elements, subject to the ocean’s rather capricious winds, and exposed for anyone who stumbled across their island to find. It was a security nightmare.

To say nothing of his actual nightmares.

He knew it was nothing more than stress. That he suffered when the strain of his work or the war or some minor setback began to bear down on him. It had been easy enough to manage in Boralus, when he could tuck himself into his bunk, surrounded by the 7th Legion. It wasn’t that he was _afraid,_ of course. A spy couldn’t be afraid and stay a spy for very long. But in the dark hours of the night, when only the silence remained to withstand his own memories, his mind couldn’t seem to tell the difference.

Sometimes, in those dark hours, he would wake from a deep sleep, convinced that when he opened his eyes it would be to a dark cell, and a sharp smile that only grew wider and wider.

He hadn’t yet abandoned the small trench he’d dug in the sand that first morning, or the relative security it provided. Building any real shelter was next to impossible with the strong winds coming off the sea, and he had to stay close to tend the fire. While survival in the field wasn’t anything Shaw couldn’t handle, he did find that it had a way of wearing him down rather quickly. Especially when he couldn’t utilize his actual skills to keep himself safe and comfortable. When he was half naked, miserable, and tormented by his own thoughts.

And so he stayed on the beach, waiting beneath the sun and the stars, waking from uneasy sleep to tend the fire. Reduced to finding ways to keep himself busy until rescue, Fairwind, or death finally came calling.

  
It was on his third night alone that he woke up shivering, only too aware that it wasn’t from the cold. He couldn’t have been asleep for long, based on the way his muscles were twitching, trying to shut down and keep him still for the rest he so desperately needed. His eyes felt gritty, and his thoughts were still clinging to his dreams. He blinked as he rolled over and looked up at the night sky through the palms.

It was then that he realized there was someone sitting beside the fire.

Shaw sat up to find Fairwind poking at the flames with a stick, letting the end catch and then snuffing it in the sand. He did this three or four times before he caught Shaw’s eye with a sidelong glance.

After a lengthy stretch of silence, Fairwind said, “I was a boy.” He took a breath and shook his head slightly, sighing out whatever might have come between one breath and the next. Eventually he continued, keeping his voice low. “Couldn’t tell you how old, no one around to keep track of that sort of thing. But small.” He patted his side. “Not enough to eat. That’s what made us so useful, you see; little hands, light fingers. Perfect for picking pockets.

“I’d kept a little for myself one afternoon, when I’d been doing it long enough that I thought I might get away with taking something off the top. Nothing anyone would miss, but it meant the world to me. It meant meat.” He smirked at Shaw. “I had my eye on a nice cut hanging from the butcher’s stall. Not a clue how I’d intended to cook it, but that hardly mattered.”

Shaw hadn’t dared to do more than breathe, but he was certain Fairwind could see his confusion regardless.

“I was halfway there when they caught me. As floggings go it was fairly light. Just enough of the lash to teach me a lesson, but oh, I learned that lesson well: don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Even if that hand barely feeds you at all.”

“Fairwind, you don’t—”

“The second time was at sea. As it happens it was also my very first billet; an honest job, if you can believe that. I’d had the brilliant idea to make a go of being decent, _convinced_ I could make a life for myself that didn’t include robbing good folks to fill the pockets of bad. But you may be surprised to learn that I mouthed off one time too many, and it earned me the lash.”

He grew quiet after that, staring into the fire for so long that Shaw began to think he might have finished his retelling. But then he sat up straight and began speaking again. Casually, as though he had never stopped. “The first time was humiliating because I wasn’t expecting it,” he explained. “That second time… that was humiliating because I wasn’t expecting it to really _hurt_.”

He turned to face Shaw, and there was something dark in his eyes that had never been there before. “You see, I thought the gang had done me a favor by going easy on me after I was caught stealing.” He shook his head. “No. No one goes easy on a thief. You scare them the first time, hope it’ll make them think twice before they do it again. It worked on me. But that small mercy only means the real pain takes you by surprise when it comes, and you find your back split open and bleeding, knowing the lash is coming for you again. Over and over, until you’re shaking as much from fear as from pain.

“You would think, after that, I’d have gotten used to it. All told I’ve managed fifty-two lashes in my time.” He chuckled quietly. “Never did learn to keep my mouth shut.”

Shaw watched him for several minutes after he finished speaking. He couldn’t seem to find the right words to follow Fairwind’s harrowing confession, and he didn’t dare utter the wrong ones. Finally, after what felt like too much time had passed, he asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

Fairwind was leaning on his hands, head lolled back lazily as he looked up at the stars. “Figured it was only fair.”

“Fair?”

“Your story for mine.”

Something unpleasant settled in the pit of Shaw’s stomach, turning over like a bad bit of fish. He frowned and asked, “What do you mean by that?” If Fairwind expected him to spill all of his secrets just because he had finally opened up—

“I mean, it seemed only fair, given what I’ve learned about you.” He tilted his head enough to catch Shaw’s eye. “What I overheard. While you were sleeping.”

The feeling in his stomach turned hot and sharp and Shaw felt his skin prickle with nervous sweat in the cold air. “I don’t—”

“Wouldn’t have expected that Stormwind’s spymaster talks in his sleep,” Fairwind remarked. There was no hint of cruelty in his tone, but Shaw cringed regardless. It was said so plainly, with so little concern, that he couldn’t help but feel mocked, despite knowing that almost certainly wasn’t Fairwind’s intention. How could it be, after what he had shared?

Shaw couldn’t stop himself from asking, “What did I say?” The breathless way the words pushed themselves up from his chest only heightened the sense of panic that seemed to have taken hold of his gut. He wanted to slow himself down, regain some sense of balance but he couldn’t find the self-control necessary to even try. “What did I _say,_ Fairwind?” he asked again.

Fairwind shrugged one shoulder. “Not much specific,” he said. Beneath the false air of ease about him there was a hint of pity in his eyes, threaded through his words, and Shaw didn’t like it one bit. At the same time some part of him felt desperately relieved by it. “But enough, I suppose.”

“Tell me. Please.” He needed to know, and he was terrified of the answer.

For just a moment Fairwind hesitated, and then at last he nodded. He sat up and brushed the sand from his palms. “You seemed… frightened. Which isn’t terribly shocking, I suppose. Your stint with the Legion isn’t the most well-kept secret, of course, though the finer details aren’t exactly public record.” He met Shaw’s gaze evenly, making no effort to hide his concern, and asked, “Just what did they do to you, Shaw?”

Shaw considered not answering. Silence was as much a tool as a clever word or a quick hand, and he had put all of those things to use at times as they were needed. But somehow, after what Fairwind had shared with him, after seeing the look in his eyes, he found himself speaking. Despite every part of him pleading not to. “There is no SI:7 training that will help you withstand a demon’s interrogation,” he said.

But that didn’t seem to satisfy the captain. “Was that all they did?” he prompted gently. As though he only half-expected an answer. Perhaps he didn’t want one.

“What else did I say?”

A long moment passed before Fairwind finally looked away, casting his gaze into the fire. “You were begging. You said—” He swallowed loud enough for Shaw to hear the dry click in his throat. “You said, ‘No more.’ That you couldn’t—” He shook his head and shuddered a sigh. “I’ve never heard you like that.”

The shame that washed over Shaw then came like a wave of heat, but the fire was low, and the wind was drawing it away from him, not toward. He fought the urge to cross his arms over his naked chest and said, “No one has.”

“Except the demons.”

Shaw nodded slowly.

“How?” Fairwind asked. _How did you survive?_ It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked that question. Not even the first time he’d asked it of himself.

“Because they wanted me to.” It was the only answer he could ever give. The truth was, he didn’t know. In the Legion’s clutches he couldn’t tell one day from the next, one lie from another, and each time they came for him they put him back just as he had been. He wasn’t even granted the mercy of open wounds or scars to account for what he had been forced to endure.

Real and _real enough_ were only concepts.

“Is it like this every night?”

Not every night, but most. Shaw settled for, “Sometimes.”

They sat in stillness and silence for a while after that, and Shaw was in no rush to shatter the tableau. But at last the flames began to gutter, and he was forced to throw more wood and dried brush onto the fire. When he sat back again he found Fairwind watching him. “You look like you have an opinion,” he said, viciously poking the small flames with a stick, “or you’re about to form one.”

Eyeing him warily, as though worried he might lash out at any second, Fairwind said, “You blame yourself for being captured, don’t you. For what they took from you and how they used it.”

“Why shouldn’t I.” It was a rhetorical question, of course; he knew all the reasons why he deserved to shoulder that blame.

But Fairwind countered with, “Because it wasn’t your fault.”

That drew a laugh from Shaw, and he spared Fairwind a quick glance from the corner of his eye. “How do you figure?”

“Bad things happen, Spymaster Shaw.”

“Not to me.”

Fairwind didn’t have to argue that what they had both experienced only recently, what they had discussed that very evening, said otherwise. Even unspoken, it hovered in the air between them. A silent truth casting light on his lie.

“The mutiny wasn’t your fault either, you know.”

Shaw was still stabbing at the base of the flames, doing more to hinder their growth than encourage them to rise. “I think we both recall I placed the blame for that squarely at your feet.”

“It would be difficult to forget,” Fairwind chuckled. He gestured to the purple bruise that graced his left eye. “But you don’t really believe it, and I’m starting to understand that now. What was it you said to me? You were taken by surprise. You let your guard down.” He leaned forward until he was in Shaw’s line of sight, making himself unavoidable. “They were waiting for the right time, Shaw. They would have found it sooner or later, or they would have gotten desperate, and perhaps even sloppy. But your men were dead either way. Their lives aren’t on your hands.”

“Even if that were true, it hardly absolves me of the rest.”

“You said yourself that there is no SI:7 training to withstand a demonic interrogation,” Fairwind pointed out.

Damn him. “I’m different,” Shaw said obstinately. 

The sound Fairwind made was part disbelief, part total refusal, proving he could be just as stubborn as the spymaster. “How so?”

Because the leader of SI:7 was supposed to be better. _He_ was supposed to be better. Nothing should have been able to get past him, and certainly not anything so critical. But instead of being the example and the leader he was meant to be, like a green recruit Shaw had walked right into a trap. He had failed, people had died, and one after another the enemy had drawn every secret from his mind while he screamed.

“Because I just am, Captain.”

“And if it had been me?”

Shaw’s head snapped up. “What?”

“If I had been captured by the Legion,” Fairwind said, “tortured by them, and had information taken against my will, would those deaths be on my hands?”

He could have lied and said yes, and that might have been the end of it. But Fairwind would know he was lying, and after everything that had happened, that didn’t seem fair. “No,” he said. “I wouldn’t expect you to withstand that sort of…” A long list of words to describe what they had done to him rolled through in his mind, and he studiously pushed each one aside. “You aren’t me.”

“So, you’ll offer mercy to everyone but yourself,” Fairwind said, almost as though he wasn’t speaking to Shaw at all, but instead confirming some theory of his. It was more than likely that was exactly what he was doing. “The other agents, the soldiers, me—we’re all just who we are, but you’re beholden to different rules.”

“Yes.”

“Rules that mean you’re always at fault.”

He knew how ridiculous it was; how little sense it made, especially when examined too closely. He was, despite what others might suggest, only human. No experience in his life had ever prepared him for the terror and pain of having every inch of who he was inside and out peeled away and laid bare by forces he couldn’t ever hope to withstand. He might have told himself that he was better, smarter, more capable than everyone else, but the truth of it was that when all was said and done, he was just a man. As vulnerable as anyone else.

Maybe that was what bothered him most.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 5 will be posted in a couple of days. It's also much more pleasant.


	5. Chapter 5

With Fairwind having returned, Shaw felt more comfortable leaving the beach, confident the fire would be tended in his absence. The salt air and the sand had done a number on his skin and hair, and so he slipped away the next morning to bathe in the freshwater pond. Fairwind had foolishly left his shirt hanging over the fallen palm, so Shaw took that, too.

Their conversation, such as it was, had continued long into the night, finally conceding to the need for sleep in the early hours of the morning. Shaw hadn’t shared much about himself or his experiences beyond what little he revealed of his time in the Legion’s grasp. Fortunately Fairwind seemed more than willing to fill in the gaps left by his silence. He spoke of his adventures, his close calls, and his regrets. Every so often he would circle back around to those times he had be unable to avoid the consequences of breaking a rule, or falling in with the wrong sort of people.

It left Shaw with a great deal to consider; about Flynn, and about himself.

He relaxed on his back in the water, watching the broken light filter through the jungle, lulled by the sound of the water in his ears. The spring that fed the pond ended in a small waterfall, churning the water around him. The pond itself was delightfully cool, and the sandy soil that surrounded it meant there were no trees to shed their leaves into the water and turn it dark. He could see down to where his toes slipped over the pebbly bottom, and watch the tiny fish that darted around him nervously. Birds sang to one another between the palms, and it was the most peace Shaw had known since the start of their voyage and subsequent stranding. The most peace he’d known for a long time, actually.

But peace could only last so long.

“A man in possession of nothing more than a single pair of skivvies might want to keep better track of them,” Fairwind remarked from where he was sitting by the water’s edge. He was holding up his own shirt and Shaw’s pants.

“They’re pants,” Shaw correctly offhandedly as he rolled onto his front and pushed through the water. “And I’ll thank you to hand them back.”

“Relax, Spymaster, I’ve no intention of making off with your only source of modesty. Though it didn’t seem to stop _you_.”

“You have other clothes,” Shaw pointed out. He found a large rock at the edge of the pond and hoisted himself up onto it. He was still underwater, but able to sit up properly, with most of his chest above the surface.

“A load of good that does me without my shirt.”

“I’ve done just fine without one—wait, the fire—” Shaw started to climb out of the water, but Fairwind put a hand on his shoulder and gently pushed him back down.

“It’s banked,” Fairwind reassured him. “And midday. No sense wasting what kindling we have on a fire no one would see.”

Shaw nodded and sank back into the water with his back to Fairwind. He should have realized that, of course; between the two of them he likely had more survival experience than all of Fairwind’s actual near-misses combined. He just couldn’t seem to get himself in order since the mutiny. Since waking up on this uncharted island with Flynn Fairwind standing over him. His unexpected savior.

Everything was just… wrong. An inch to the left no matter where he looked. He couldn’t concentrate, and he knew it wasn’t just the humiliation of being caught unawares by a bunch of traitorous scum, but something else. Something that began the moment he saw Fairwind’s face crumble at the mere mention of the whip. An echoing distress that had built inside him and seemed to amplify his uneasiness, until he could no longer think the way he was meant to. If he had been back in Boralus he might have put in for leave, just to have the time to get himself right again. As it was, on this island, he only seemed able to focus on the loop his thoughts had taken to circling. The reminder that he was broken, and unable to hide it. Fairwind’s concise assessment of him the night before had made that much painfully clear.

As though thinking of Fairwind had summoned him to action, Shaw heard the sound of rustling clothes behind him and turned in time to see Fairwind—minus his pants—take a flying leap into the pond. The wave of water he displaced sloshed over Shaw’s shoulders and slapped him in the face, and he sputtered indignantly.

“Everything is a game to you, isn’t it,” he asked, trying to sound disapproving and failing miserably.

“Whenever I can help it!” Fairwind called back merrily. He disappeared under the water for a few seconds, only to appear again closer to Shaw, hauling himself up out of the water with his long hair hanging around his face like tangled seaweed. He held out a hand in offering. “Care to swim?”

“I don’t really… swim,” Shaw half-lied.

“Seemed to be doing a decent job of it when I arrived.”

“About that.” Shaw slipped off the rock and into the water. Closer to Fairwind, he tried not to note. “Did it ever occur to you that I might have wanted a little time to myself?”

“In fact it did.” Fairwind ducked low in the water, until only his head was above the surface, and began eeling around the perimeter of Shaw’s personal space. “But then I thought, well, you _did_ steal my shirt.”

“I needed something to wear after I finished washing.”

“Still theft. What would Wyrmbane say,” he tutted disapprovingly.

There was something about the way he was moving so smoothly, the same easy smile on his face that he seemed to have whether he was facing certain death or patting himself on the back for a job well done. It amused Shaw, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he demanded, “Would you stop that? Stay still!” Without thinking, he reached out and splashed water into Fairwind’s smiling face.

They both froze, and then in a move reminiscent of their brawl in the sand, Fairwind lunged. He tackled Shaw back into the water, and they both went down in a rush of bubbles and flailing limbs. When Shaw managed to wriggle his way free he surfaced, took a deep gulp of air, and was promptly dragged back down again. He was able to gain the upper hand quickly this time, and escaped Fairwind’s grasping hands only to be caught by a pinpoint spray of water right between his eyes the moment he broke the surface. Fairwind had his hands cupped together, squeezing the water from the hollow between his palms. Shaw rubbed his face and put his hands up to ward off the next attack. “Stop that!”

Fairwind laughed and shuffled back through the water to get away when Shaw came for his revenge, but he wasn’t fast enough to keep from having his legs swept out from under him. He yelped and disappeared beneath the surface, arms up and waving. Shaw laughed until he was summarily upended by Fairwind, who came from below and _lifted_ him onto his shoulders as he threw him backwards into the pond.

“Truce!” Fairwind was shouting when Shaw came up for air again. “I call a truce!”

“Is that proper pirate parlance?” Shaw asked between gasps. He crossed his arms, doing his best to appear stern despite standing naked in the middle of a pond, dripping water.

Fairwind was moving around again, only half-swimming, and clearly not paying attention to his surroundings. “Whatever keeps you from using your dirty SI:7 tricks on me—hey!” He batted at Shaw’s hand and hopped to the side through the water. “That’s exactly what I mean!”

“Yes, the SI:7 training on pond horseplay.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you people. I’ve seen some of the clever schemes you’ve devised.” He stopped moving when Shaw held out a hand in a mirror of his earlier offer.

“Truce.”

Fairwind eyed him, wary eyes narrowed over the glittering reflection of the water. Finally he nodded and stood up, taking Shaw’s hand. At that very same moment Shaw pulled, but Fairwind was ready for him; he jerked his own arm back, and as a result neither of them went anywhere.

“You’re a filthy cheater,” Fairwind said. His smile was lopsided, and far too approving.

“Same could be said of you,” Shaw pointed out. He was still gripping Fairwind’s hand.

“Mate, the same has been said about me more times than I can count.”

Shaw rolled his eyes. “That isn’t anything to be proud of, Captain.”

Fairwind actually managed to sound offended when he said, “It is if you’re a pirate!” He then arched one eyebrow and pointedly glanced down at their joined hands. “Planning to let go at some point?”

“And end up in the water again?”

“Would you rather end up somewhere else?”

The question had been posed in such a way that Shaw was almost certain he’d intended it playfully. But they both seemed to realize the unspoken innuendo at the same moment, much as they had both spotted the opportunity to trick the other with the handshake.

This time Shaw intended to be the first to act on it.

He lunged at Fairwind, grasping the back of his head and tangling his fingers in the knotted strands of his wet hair. The kiss was hard, inelegant and slippery, and for the first few terrifying seconds Shaw wasn’t certain it would be reciprocated.

But Fairwind seemed to catch up quickly enough, and he released the handshake to wrap his arms around Shaw’s back, instead. His fingers slipped over Shaw’s wet skin, sliding down below the surface to grasp his thighs and haul him up until his toes no longer touched the bottom. Until Shaw could wrap one of his legs around Fairwind’s hip beneath the water. Shaw brought his other arm up to curl it around Fairwind’s shoulder, and there they stood, entwined like snakes, kissing more passionately than Shaw could ever remember kissing anyone in his life before that moment.

He could feel Fairwind’s arousal even in the cold water, and his own hard length was caught between their bodies, aching for a more deliberate touch. But it was enough in that moment just to be held, and to hold, and not think of anything else. No blame, no anger, and no demons, real or self-inflicted.

He felt hands glide across the curve of his backside beneath the water, and knew he must have tensed when Fairwind’s mouth pulled back from his. “Is this alright?” he whispered against Shaw’s lips. The hair from his mustache tickled Shaw’s skin. “I can—”

“_No,_” Shaw gasped, plunging back into the kiss. He didn’t want to stop, didn’t want to think about why, or anything but how good everything felt in that moment. When he felt Fairwind’s fingers squeeze and knead his flesh he groaned, molding himself against the warm body holding his. It was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

And so of course it had to shatter.

“Now, that’s quite a sight,” a cruel voice called from the edge of the pond.

Shaw withdrew from Fairwind’s grasp like an octopus escaping a trap, and stumbled back in the water to find the pond was surrounded by a dozen familiar faces. The mutineers. His former crew.

They couldn’t have approached silently, not with all the leaf litter and brush in the surrounding jungle. He’d been distracted. Let his guard down. _Again_.

“Don’t stop on our account, gentlemen.”

“Mood’s a bit spoiled, Morris,” Fairwind growled. “Came back for a little shoreleave, did you?”

“Flynn Fairwind.” Morris had his thumbs hooked into his belt as he walked, slowly making his way around the edge of the pond. “You just can’t seem to keep a crew, can you.”

“Seems there’s no shortage of disloyal bottom feeders to be found around these parts,” Fairwind agreed.

Morris was an ugly man, inside and out. His face looked like it had been pressed against something flat and hot, leaving him red-faced, with a nose like a pug. He walked with an uneven gait, as though favoring an old injury, and in the few seconds it took to note that Shaw thought of at least half a dozen ways to use the fact to his advantage. The problem was, they all required that he be on dry land, and preferably clothed. Weapons would have been nice, too.

Why hadn’t they taken the time to fashion any weapons? Or brought some with them? Even Fairwind’s spear would have been better than nothing.

Morris bent down and picked up the two pairs of pants and Fairwind’s shirt. “A little romantic interlude, eh? Had a feeling there was something going on between you two.” He looked around at his fellow mutineers, who all chuckled dutifully at his bad joke. “Especially after that _private punishment_ the captain here doled out.”

The pit of Shaw’s stomach dropped out and he heard himself groan quietly; it was _his_ fault. His fault _again_, and they were both going to pay for it. How many times would he make the same mistakes before he finally learned?

“You obviously came back for something, Morris, so why don’t you spit it out and save us a bit of time,” Fairwind said.

“Of course, of course. Wouldn’t want to keep you two from your fun.” Morris stepped closer to the water’s edge. “That little trinket you liberated from the Zandalari temple. I’d like it now, if you please.” He held out his hand, as though he expected one of them might have it hidden somewhere on their person.

Fairwind must have had the same thought, because he scoffed and said, “You honestly don’t think I’ve got it on me in here, do you? I knew you weren’t very bright, but you’ve got to at least understand what _naked_ means.”

“You or the captain, one of you has it, or knows where it is.”

Shaw felt it was time he finally spoke up. “It was in my cabin when you hauled me out of my bed,” he said, only slightly bitter over the memory. “Perhaps you should look to your _loyal_ companions. One of them must have taken it when your back was turned.”

“Nice try, but I’ve searched every man myself.” He lifted a grubby finger and pointed at Fairwind. “Figured it was on that one when we tossed him in the drink, seeing as we’ve near torn the ship apart trying to find it. Thought it was a lost cause.”

“Let me guess, someone else saw the island and figured we might’ve made it here,” Fairwind sighed. He looked at Shaw and said, “Honestly, I have the worst luck.”

“Shut it!” Morris shouted. “I’ll search you both piece by piece if I have to! Where’s the pouch?!”

Fairwind shrugged. “Probably at the bottom of the sea.”

“What?” That sent a discontented murmur through the gathered mutineers. Morris narrowed his already tiny eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Clearly Morris really _was_ an idiot. “It means it was in his coat pocket,” Shaw said, “and he lost his coat when he went overboard.” He didn’t bother mentioning that it had been lost rescuing him. Or that Fairwind shouldn’t have had the pouch in the first place.

“That’s about the sum of it,” Fairwind agreed.

“Not a thief, then?” Shaw muttered under his breath.

“I was keeping it safe!”

He hoped the icy look he gave Fairwind said all that was needed on that score.

“Out of the water, both of you,” Morris abruptly ordered. He backed it up by aiming a battered cutlass at the two of them. “Tie them up, and this time make sure they’re secure. Slippery as a fish, that one,” he said of Fairwind.

There really was no other option but to obey. They couldn’t remain in the pond forever, and Shaw had a feeling experienced sailors might not have a problem wading into chest-deep water to haul them out if they tried. He sighed and gestured for Fairwind to follow, and together they left the water, leaving behind all the peace and comfort it offered. His pants and Fairwind’s shirt were thrust into his arms, and he dressed quickly.

“That’s my—”

“Let it go,” Shaw said. He might have added that he would give it back when they were released, but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe that was ever going to happen. If Morris and the others didn’t slit their throats once he and Fairwind proved as useless as they insisted, then they would be tossed overboard again. No doubt this time it would be somewhere far away from any land that even Fairwind and his prodigious swimming skills might be able to reach.

Once dressed, Shaw was quickly seized by rough hands much like those that had hauled him from his bed. His arms were pulled behind his back, and bound so tight that even he knew there was no way to easily work his way free. Not without help, anyway, and it was unlikely the others would risk putting him anywhere near Fairwind. They were marched back to the ship, past the embers of their fire, the fallen palm, and Shaw’s trench-turned-bed. Their life for the past several days disappeared in the blink of an eye, and before them waited only a set of rowboats, the endless sea, and whatever unfortunate fate awaited them back on the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week and the next will be pretty busy for me on account of the holidays, so it might take a bit before the next part is written. Then again, I might have it in a day or two! We'll see how it goes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the tags, and be warned that this chapter contains some content that might be difficult to read.

“Secure him to the mainmast.”

A brutal shove to his back sent Shaw stumbling across the deck. He landed before the barrel of the mast, surrounded by the rail and its many yards of tightly wound rope. There was blood on the front of his shirt from where his lip had been split with the butt of an oar, and a nasty bruise blossoming on the side of his face. In the short journey from the island to the waiting ship his shirt had been soaked through with seawater and sweat, and he’d suffered more than one cuffing for his supposed insolence.

Still, he was doing marginally better than Fairwind, who had come close to finding himself gagged when he wouldn’t stop insulting Morris. His parting remarks as the party split between the two rowboats had earned him a kick in the gut that left him gasping for air while the others laughed. It was not a pleasant scene, and Shaw was certain it would only get more harrowing before the day was through.

They untied Shaw’s hands and brought them around to his front, and his shoulders ached in protest. His muscles were bruised and stiff, pain etched deep into the tissue, and the sudden change in direction offered him no relief. He clenched his teeth until he could ignore the pain. Until the sound of his own blood roared in his ears. Then he heard them bringing Fairwind aboard, and his whole world narrowed to what was happening over his shoulder. He couldn’t see anything but the ocean and the island in the distance, but that didn’t make much of a difference. Not with Fairwind.

“I’ve got to tell you, this ship has looked better,” Fairwind observed offhandedly. “What’s it been, four days? Have you been hauling murlocs since you—” He was abruptly silenced by another blow to the gut, this time, Shaw guessed, administered by a closed fist. “Noted, shutting up,” he wheezed. Shaw heard him drop to the deck.

The rope that had been used to tie Shaw was wrapped twice around the wide column of the mast, secured to his arms at each end with several tight knots. To his left and right, a curved wooden rail prevented him from moving in either direction. Shaw was left to kneel, his face pressed to the sea-worn wood, panting in the hot sun and trying to think of a way to save his life and Fairwind’s.

Morris hadn’t yet ordered the others to do anything, and behind Shaw the wheezing had stopped. He could hear snatches of conversation, quiet chatter between the other mutineers. Morris’ voice was there too, carried over the wind and the creak of the rigging. He was speaking to someone, conferring with his fellow conspirator in hushed, hurried tones. Shaw knew what that meant without needing to hear anything they were saying.

This was all one big gamble. A desperate bid to win them the artifact they’d lost in the mutiny. If it failed, there would be no second attempt to wring the truth out of their prisoners. Which meant things were about to get much, much worse.

“Get him up,” Morris barked. “Tie his hands there.” The pounding of feet on the deck obscured all other sounds as the sailors rushed to obey. Shaw couldn’t be certain what they were doing with Fairwind, only that it required he remain upright. He tried to ignore the cold fear that coiled in the pit of his belly as his mind unhelpfully supplied several possible answers, each worse than the last.

“Ten lashes,” Morris said, the smile in his voice giving the words a menacing hiss. “That _was_ to be your punishment, wasn’t it?”

Behind him Fairwind groaned.

Shaw struggled against the rope. The mutineers were speaking openly to one another now, some laughing, others placing bets. He didn’t know what they were betting on, but he had a feeling the answer would only infuriate him. He was prepared to offer Morris anything—amnesty from the Alliance and a sizable purse, if need be. Enough gold to make each man a noble in his own right. He had unfettered access to the kingdom’s coffers for the war effort, he could make Wyrmbane—make the king understand—

He heard Fairwind curse, followed by the sounds of a struggle, and another breathless wheeze as he was gut-punched for the third time. There was no accompanying sound of his body collapsing to the deck, however.

The next sound Shaw heard was heavy boots on the boards behind him.

“Failing to carry out the proper punishment at sea is a sure sign of a weak command, Captain Shaw,” Morris said. “Not something to be taken lightly.”

“Morris, no!” Fairwind shouted. He was promptly struck again.

Hands gripped the collar of Shaw’s shirt from behind, and without warning it was torn in two down the center of his back, exposing him to the harsh sun and the leering eyes of the mutineers. What remained of the shirt hung from his arms in damp strips. Fear slowly coiled in his gut like a snake, yet he found himself numbly focused on the thought that the salt of his own sweat would only make the pain that much worse.

Something landed on his right shoulder. Fighting to keep himself steady, Shaw turned his head just enough to see several lengths of braided brown leather lying innocently across his freckled skin. Nine in total. The ship seemed to tilt beneath him as he realized what he was looking at.

_That_ was _not_ the whip he had expected.

For just a moment, in the face of what he knew was coming, Shaw abandoned the composure for which he was so well known. He jerked away from the whip in a desperate, futile bid to put as much distance between himself and the cat-o’-nine-tails as he possibly could. It didn’t do much more than drop the knotted cords to his forearm. The feel of it, the soft touch that belied its brutal purpose, made his skin crawl.

Morris bellowed with laughter behind him. “So much for mainlander courage!” he roared. The other men joined in, and Shaw bit the inside of his cheek to ground himself and drown out their laughter with his own pain. He tasted blood, but ignored it. In a few minutes it would hardly make a difference.

“So, ten lashes for dereliction of duty,” Morris announced, reading off the charges as though they were real. “Ten for weak leadership.” He walked a slow half-circle behind Shaw, over and over, back and forth. A metronome, counting off the final beats before the torture began. The demons had never been so talkative. “Another ten for cheek, and ten for not giving us what we want.” Morris paused. Shaw heard his boots scrape across the deck as he turned. “Hell, let’s throw in another ten for being a lousy drunk!” he shouted to the cheers of his fellow traitors.

Fifty lashes. Light help him.

“Don’t do this!” Fairwind roared over their laughter.

“Gag him, since he won’t shut up on his own,” Morris ordered. He dragged the end of the whip across Shaw’s shoulders, and Shaw couldn’t hide the fearful shudder that gripped him. He had never been whipped; he strongly suspected that he never wanted to find out just how awful it really was. To think that he could have threatened Fairwind—_Flynn—_with a punishment so cruel, so needlessly vicious, made his stomach churn. In his own ignorance he had imagined something more like a riding crop. It was almost comical to think that after witnessing a lifetime of evil and cruelty he could still manage to be so naive. There was only one reason to deliver lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and it wasn’t simply to impart a lesson. It was pain; pain and brutality and blood.

“This isn’t quite standard issue, mind. Just a little something of my own. Your skin won’t split on the first few strokes,” Morris explained. He had withdrawn the whip, and somehow that absence was more terrifying than the implicit threat of its passive touch. “But you won’t be close to halfway done before blood is drawn, Shaw, I promise you that. Soft skin like yours?” He tutted and chuckled darkly.

Fairwind was struggling behind him, fighting the gag they meant to force into his mouth. He spit and cursed and promised vengeance on each and every man present, but it didn’t amount to anything more than a few extra bruises. His voice began to disappear behind the muffle of whatever they had used to gag him. Suddenly he shouted, “Do it to me!”

Morris turned away. Those gathered on the deck had fallen silent, but Shaw still struggled to hear over the pounding of his blood in his ears and the rasp of his own ragged breathing.

“What’s that?” Morris asked. There was a hint of amusement in his voice; he knew exactly what Fairwind was asking for, but he wanted to hear him say it.

Shaw tried to find his voice to object. He couldn’t let Fairwind do it, couldn’t let him take a lifetime’s worth of pain in one sitting, all for his sake. But when he opened his mouth to speak he felt something hard and sharp press into the base of his skull, silently warning him to keep quiet. In a moment of cold clarity he realized this was what Morris had wanted all along; Fairwind had the artifact last, and he was their best chance of finding it again. That was why they had strung him up in the first place.

“I’ll take his lashes,” Fairwind said, oblivious to the trap. The words were raw, forced out past his own fear, and Shaw felt something turn over in his chest at the sound of them. Fairwind was willing to take fifty lashes for him. After all he had learned, all he knew Fairwind would never tell him about his own suffering, the sheer weight of that gesture was staggering.

Morris pretended to consider the trade for a moment, and then Shaw heard him grunt a noncommittal sound. “Makes no difference to me,” he said. “You can take the lashes or watch me split your lover’s back open, it’s your choice. Unless you’re having second thoughts about telling us what we want to know.”

“It’s gone, Morris, I already told you! There’s nothing to beat out of either of us!”

Shaw could imagine Morris’ indifferent shrug. “Then I’ll just whip you bloody for my own amusement,” he said.

“It’s what he wants!” Shaw snapped furiously. He felt the blade pierce the skin at the base of his neck; a sudden, sharp sting followed by the sickening heat of his own warm blood as it rolled down his back.

“I know it is,” Fairwind answered, resigned to the fate one of them had to suffer for no reason but some sick bastard’s satisfaction. Evidently he had made his choice. “Keep quiet and let me save you again, alright?”

“Fairwind…” Shaw cursed and shook his head. “Flynn, _don’t_,” he pleaded.

Morris muttered something else, something undoubtedly tasteless and cruel, but Shaw was no longer listening. He was pulling at the ropes around his wrists, his fists clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms. He could hear Morris’ footsteps across the deck as he left Shaw and moved closer to Flynn, and the thought of the whip on Flynn’s back, of his skin lashed raw and bloody, drove all rational thought from Shaw’s mind. He growled like some feral animal, digging his feet into the base of the mast to try and wrench his way free. There were more words exchanged, Flynn’s answer drew an unexpected laugh from the mutineers, and then without warning the first keen of the whip cut through the air, demanding silence.

_One._

Flynn made a strangled sound, swallowing it back before it could turn into a scream. Shaw jerked against the ropes, but between the salt water and the knots they wouldn’t budge. The whip struck again. Flynn cried out in pain.

_Two._

There was no way to pull free, and no hope of breaking the rope with his bare hands. Shaw cursed and called out to Flynn again, desperate, but the sound of the whip cut across his shout.

_Three._

Another strike came down somewhere behind him, and the onlookers cheered; Morris had drawn blood. Flynn’s cries melted into sobs, and his voice broke wordlessly. His pain was only met by more laughter from the gathered mutineers. “Stop it!” Shaw screamed at them.

_Four._

He could hear Morris panting. Whipping a man was hard work, it seemed, and it was unlikely he had been prepared to undertake such a demanding task. Yet he kept at it regardless. The next two came faster, and Shaw imagined they were sloppy, imprecise. Morris would never make it to fifty.

_Five. Six._

But how long would Flynn last?

_Seven._

“Look at you,” Morris sneered, “had enough already, have you?”

_Eight._

The demons had never given him any warning. They had been terribly, efficiently clinical about every torture they forced upon him. And whether the pain was real or only ever in his mind, Shaw had been blind to each and every new horror they inflicted. In some ways he thought perhaps that was more merciful. Not by design, of course—the Legion had no concept of mercy. But there was a certain amount of comfort in ignorance. In not knowing what to expect. Most of Shaw’s life had been balanced on the blade’s width between what he knew and what he didn’t.

Flynn didn’t have that luxury. He knew what was coming, every time.

_Nine._

Shaw’s skin was bruised and bleeding at the wrists, rubbed raw by his endless efforts to pull his way free from the ropes. It had soaked into the fibers and stained the deck beneath him. His legs gave out, and he dropped back to his knees before the mast. He pressed his forehead to the wood and fought against himself for every full breath. Flynn screamed. Morris grunted with the swing of the whip. No one else made a sound.

_Ten._

“I’ll tell you!” Flynn sobbed, “I’ll tell you where it is, just—just stop, please… _No more_.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm thinking this will be about 9 chapters long, but don't hold me to that. This story has had a fun time surprising me.

Shaw collapsed against the mast. Blood ran down his arms, leaving long streaks that stained his ribs crimson. He could smell the metallic tang of it rising around him, and it was nauseating in a way it had never been before. He’d used himself up in his futile effort to pull free of the ropes, and all he had to show for it was fresh wounds and exhaustion.

On a word from Morris they cut Flynn from where he was tied, and he dropped to the deck with a heavy sound.

“On your feet,” Morris commanded.

Flynn groaned as he was forced to stand. “Untie Shaw, too,” he said. He was panting, sucking in air as though he could somehow breathe hard enough to fight the pain that way.

“I’m no fool, Fairwind. Shaw stays here ‘til we’ve got the artifact.”

Flynn’s cooperation instantly evaporated and he snarled, “Do you want the artifact or not? I won’t tell you where it is until he’s free.”

Shaw knew almost immediately that the ultimatum would leave Morris with no real choice but to submit. He could continue the flogging, and Shaw had a feeling Morris was stupid enough to consider doing just that, but those had been hard lashes he’d administered. He’d broken skin on the third swing, and the injuries would only grow worse with each subsequent strike. That might put Flynn’s life in jeopardy. With confirmation that he knew the artifact’s location, or at least claimed to, keeping him alive was now far more important than it had been just a few minutes ago. More important than petty vengeance.

Unfortunately for Shaw, it offered _him_ no protection at all. Thankfully, Morris seemed too stupid to grasp the subtleties of incentive. Or else he had doubts about just how much Flynn actually cared for Shaw. Either way, he made no further threats against either of them—for the moment. With a muttered curse he gave the order, and a few seconds later Shaw’s arms fell limp at his sides as he was cut from the mast.

“Get him up,” Morris barked.

“No.”

Shaw rested his head on his arm and gathered his strength as he watched the scene behind him from the corner of his eye. Flynn stepped forward, back straight and shoulders squared despite his wounds. He faced Morris with a hard stare. The sort that Shaw imagined came naturally to most pirates after enough time in the trade. “Leave him here,” he said. There was a coldness to him that Shaw had never seen before, not even on the beach, when he’d called Flynn a coward. It was strange and disconcerting to see so much rage on a face like his. A face that should have been smiling, instead.

“I’m not leaving the Alliance spymaster loose on this ship. He’ll come with us,” Morris insisted.

Flynn’s blue-green gaze flickered to Shaw and he frowned. “Fine,” he said, “let’s get this over with.”

Together with a half dozen of the mutineers—men Shaw assumed Morris trusted to have his back rather than stab it—they made their way down into the ship’s hold. Most of the gunports were shuttered, and the portholes had long since frosted over with salt, plunging them into near-total darkness almost the moment they reached the bottom of the steps. In the low light Shaw could see stacks of crates that had been left lying open, their contents strewn about the floor of the hold. Morris clearly hadn’t been lying when he told Flynn they’d torn the ship apart looking for the artifact; anything light enough had been overturned, and the rest had been tossed aside without a care. It rendered the hold a chaotic mess that they were forced to carefully pick their way across. Flynn indicated the far end, below the foremast. Morris grunted and shoved him forward.

“This had better not be a trap,” Morris warned. He was carrying an oil lamp through the dark, and his small eyes were trained on the ground as he stepped around yards of uncoiled rope and crushed hardtack. The fools had been so bent on finding the artifact that they’d destroyed their own supplies. Shaw tried not to feel disappointed in his choice of crew.

“Really, how likely is it I might’ve managed to lay a trap that you _ somehow _ missed during this little bout of spontaneous redecorating you’ve done,” Flynn asked, indicating the state of the hold around them.

“Just shut up and walk.”

Shaw was only a few paces behind Morris, who kept his cutlass at the small of Flynn’s back as they approached the last partition. The tip of the blade lay nestled just below the most egregious of the open wounds that crisscrossed Flynn’s tanned skin. Fortunately the damage wasn’t nearly as severe as Shaw had feared, but it wasn’t a pretty sight, either, and it had to hurt more than he was letting on. Flynn needed a healer.

The party came to a stop surrounded by barrels. Most, Shaw knew from his own check of the hold’s contents shortly before their voyage, were filled with rum. One was slightly smaller than the others, newer, and branded with an Alteraci import seal. From his own regrettable experience Shaw knew that one was at least half-filled with brandy. It was to that cask that Flynn pointed when he said, “It’s in there.”

Morris eyed him skeptically. “In there?” he asked, as though he found it unfathomable that a solid object could be placed within a container intended for liquid. Shaw reevaluated the man’s intelligence a bit lower based on this new evidence.

“Should be,” Flynn said with an easy shrug. He shot Shaw a subtle look, almost too quick to catch through the shifting light of the shadows. “In the cask,” he added quietly.

_ Cask_, not barrel.

Shaw had to fight through the fog of his own exhaustion and pain to remind himself that he was a spy, and he knew a signal when he heard one. He carefully showed no sign that he had recognized Flynn’s sudden change in vocabulary, but readied himself to fight if need be. In such a small hold, surrounded by half a dozen mutineers who _ hadn’t _ spent most of the last week trying to survive on minimal water and food, the odds were far from favorable. Still, he’d take a fighting death over drowning any day. He suspected Flynn felt much the same about the matter.

Morris had the top of the cask removed, and he ordered one of the men to search the bottom for the artifact. Shaw couldn’t help but frown at the waste of good brandy. When the sailor drew his arm back with nothing to show for his efforts, Morris rounded on Flynn.

“Do you take me for a fool?!” he snarled.

Flynn opened his mouth to answer, then promptly snapped it shut again. Shaw could almost see the _ nope, too easy _ that danced on the tip of his tongue. If he had a plan, taunting Morris didn’t seem to be part of it. “I swear it’s in here,” he said. “Open the others, maybe I put it in with the rum.”

Morris gestured for the others to begin breaking opening the barrels, while Flynn made a show of poking his nose into the top of each one to have a look. None of the mutineers seemed to care that he was walking around the hold, no longer bound with the tip of a cutlass at his back. He passed Shaw during his halfhearted search and casually nudged him back with a muttered excuse about being in the way. It put Shaw closer to the back of the group, far away from Morris, who was distracted by a second search of the brandy cask.

Suddenly Flynn exclaimed, “Ah, here it is!” He stepped back as Morris and the others came pounding across the deck of the hold toward the indicated barrel. Morris thrust his own arm inside up to the shoulder, but when he drew it back again his hand was empty.

“You’re lying again,” he warned, “there’s _ nothing _ in here!”

With all the confidence he employed on a daily basis to swindle, cheat, and lie his way into the hearts and pockets of everyone he encountered, Flynn said, “I just saw it, mate. A little glint there, at the bottom. You must have missed it.”

Morris held the rim of the barrel and peered into the dark amber depths. “I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Right there!” Flynn gestured more emphatically. “It’s—hold on, you’re blocking the light. You’ll never spot it that way. Give me that lamp, would you?”

One of the mutineers reached over and handed the oil lamp to Flynn, who held it his above Morris’ head.

“Let me just come around behind you here,” Flynn muttered as he sidled past the others, closer to Shaw. “There,” he said, “don’t you see it?”

“There’s nothing down there!” Morris shouted.

Suddenly it seemed as though everything happened in the blink of an eye. Flynn raised his leg and kicked over one of the open barrels of rum at the same moment he said, “Well, how about a little more light?” Morris and the others turned the wrong way, looking toward the wave of rum as it sloshed across the floor, oblivious to Flynn tipping a second barrel beside them. By the time they realized what had happened it was too late; Flynn raised his arms and dashed the oil lamp on the deck of the hold, scattering fire and setting the alcohol ablaze. The flames devoured the high-proof rum and raced across the ground, eating up the uncoiled ropes and hardtack, licking at the rum-soaked arms of the mutineers. Men screamed, and the hold erupted in chaos.

Shaw stepped back and felt Flynn’s hand close around his arm. “Run!” he shouted over the growing sounds of greedy flames and panicked cries. The heat licked at Shaw’s back as Flynn pulled him up the steps to the deck, and suddenly they were out of the shadows and back in the light, surrounded by enemies.

Flynn didn’t stop, he simply barreled into the first mutineer he met, taking the man down with a left-handed swing that carried all the force of his own forward momentum. Smoke poured from the gunports and rose around them. It billowed out of the darkness of the hold, choking the deck of the ship in thick, acrid clouds.

Shaw had sailed on plenty of ships in his life, and witnessed twice that number destroyed for one reason or another. He had seen them burn in both peace and war, and watched them sink below the waves with his own two eyes. He knew firsthand how quickly a ship could go down, how easily it could take everyone aboard with it. Up to that moment he had always been fortunate enough to avoid suffering that fate himself, but the speed with which the fire consumed the ship around them was nothing short of astounding. He looked up to find the deck was already burning, and as he watched the flames jumped to the nets and ropes and from there the sails. The mainmast caught fire and the wood groaned as the ship beneath it burned from within. One last mutineer made an attempt to stop them, but Shaw threw his elbow into the man’s jaw and knocked him to the deck. The others were no longer concerned with two prisoners escaping the same fire that threatened to kill them all.

“Jump!” Flynn shouted as they neared the railing.

“You first!”

Shaw saw a flash of utter disbelief cross Flynn’s face before it broke into a smile. “I can’t believe you’re arguing over this _ now_,” he shouted, “but I probably should have expected as much. Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to play another round of _ who’s-the-bigger-ass-today_, we’re out of time!” He grabbed Shaw by the tattered remnants of his shirt and jerked him close. “Just in case!”

Shaw had a second to be surprised before Flynn’s lips were mashed against his own, and then he was falling, tumbling backwards over the side of the ship. It was a strangely familiar feeling, stranger still to be sober for it. He hit the water and immediately struggled for the surface, coming up just in time to spot Flynn stepping up onto the railing, preparing to dive.

There was a deafening crack and a deep, mournful groan, and both men turned their heads up to see the mainmast finally give in to the fire. It came crashing down, racing toward the water as though desperate to save itself, dragging a wall of burning sails along with it. Flynn threw himself over the side just as the mast hit the deck and railing, cutting a jagged, fiery gouge in the side of the ship before it plunged into the sea. Flames burst from the hull as the sails and rigging followed, and Shaw was forced to dive to escape the rain of fiery debris as it raced toward him.

He swam a short distance underwater and came up again where the light was clear overhead. When he turned around he saw that where he had been was now a tangle of burning wreckage.

And Flynn was nowhere to be seen.

“Flynn!” he shouted. He tried to push himself up in the water but he was only plunged back in up to his nose for his efforts.

Flynn had landed in the water well clear of the falling mast, but had he escaped the rest of the wreckage? Shaw turned around and around to look for him, but he saw no mop of long auburn hair bobbing about. The sounds of human chaos from the ship had largely ceased, leaving the remainder to burn in eerie silence with only the low, steady roar of the flames for company. Shaw called out again, but there was no answer. Nothing moved but the fire.

He took a deep breath and lunged beneath the waves. He swam back toward the ship, back to where the rigging had toppled into the sea. When he came up for air he was surrounded by smoke and still-burning debris. He dove again and began searching, trying to remember where he had last seen Flynn, desperately groping through the darkness to find him. Twice his hands closed around what he thought were Flynn’s pants, and twice he found himself holding nothing more than scraps of sail. He went down again and again, too aware that he was running out of time. Finally, after what felt like a terrible eternity, his fingers closed around flesh. Shaw kicked for the surface, praying to the Light and anyone else who would listen that he had found Flynn, and not some unlucky mutineer.

When he reached air he took a deep, painful gulp to fill his own lungs. Beside him a familiar face lay slack and pale against his shoulder. Shaw could see right away that Flynn wasn’t breathing.

The mainmast was still lying half-trapped within the ship’s hill, burning along the lower quarter of its length, but the wood was blessedly free of fire close to the water. Shaw dragged Flynn over to the charred mast and hauled him up until he was lying flat on his back. There was no easy way to get him air, but Shaw tried; in that tense space between one second and the next he did everything he knew to breathe life back into Flynn Fairwind before it was too late.

“_Come on_,” he rasped, ducking down to push air into Flynn’s lungs for a fourth time. Between each breath he did his best to squeeze below his ribs, encouraging him to expel the water in his lungs. When he finally felt movement under his hands he shouted in relief and rushed to carefully tip Flynn onto his side.

“That’s it,” Shaw muttered as Flynn began to breathe on his own again. “You’re alright now, you’re safe.” As safe as their circumstances allowed, anyway.

Flynn coughed and shuddered, but he managed to open his eyes. “Shaw?” he rasped. He seemed confused, as though he hadn’t expected to find himself in Shaw’s arms, alive.

Shaw managed a shaky smile as he ran a hand over Flynn’s forehead, brushing back the wet strands of hair clinging to his skin. “Yes, it’s me. And before you ask: no, we’re not dead.”

Flynn took a deep breath and managed a small nod. “Oh, good,” he mumbled quietly, almost dreamily. “Would’ve been embarrassing… Was pretty dashing right up ’til that whole drowning bit.”

  
  


Although Shaw wasn’t quite the swimmer Flynn had proved to be on the night of the mutiny, he nevertheless managed to get them both to shore. Fortunately for both men the slowly sinking ship was much closer to the island than it had been the first time.

Flynn was still mumbling mostly nonsense, drifting in and out of consciousness. Shaw thought he must have been struck by something in the water. Perhaps the heavy rigging as it fell. He couldn’t seem to keep his eyes open, and more than once Shaw was forced to slap him to wake him up again.

“Stay with me,” he ordered. “That’s a command from your captain.”

“I’m the captain,” Flynn argued.

“You don’t have a ship right now.”

“Nnuh… you.”

Shaw had Flynn cradled against him, his raw back flush to Shaw’s chest. It was the only way to keep his wounds out of the sand, although at the moment those injuries were likely the least of his worries. “What was that?” he prompted.

“Neither do you,” Flynn managed more clearly.

“Yes, well, I _ had _ a ship.” Shaw jostled Flynn in his arms. “Stay awake, Fairwind.”

“You were calling me Flynn.” He swallowed thickly. “Before.”

“Then stay awake _ Flynn_.”

A slight nod, followed by a quiet, “Shaw…?”

“Mathias. It’s only fair.”

“Mm… Like that. My coat.”

“‘A tragic sacrifice to the sea,’ you told me. Remember? I’ll buy you a new one when we get back to Boralus.” _ If _ they ever made it back. “Flynn? Wake up.”

“No,” Flynn drawled sleepily.

“Yes. You can’t sleep now.”

Flynn tried to shake his head. He only succeeded in slumping to one side. “No, not sleep… Coat. By the water. A rock. Looks like…”

Shaw hoisted him mostly upright again. “What rock? What are you talking about?”

“Rock looks like, uh, Wyrmbane’s…” He lifted one arm enough to make a vague gesture at his own shoulder. “That.”

“His shoulder? Flynn, what—”

But before he could reason any sort of clarity from Flynn, the conversation was abruptly halted by the sound of a hoarse, angry growl behind them. Shaw heard the familiar sound of a blade as it was drawn from its sheath. He didn’t bother to wonder who it belonged to.

“Figures you two rats would manage to scurry to safety again,” Morris sneered.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to Eria for her help with a particularly troublesome scene in this chapter.

“Wow, he’s… _really_ determined,” Flynn mumbled, squinting up at Morris. How the mutinous cretin had survived was anyone’s guess; he should have burned up in the hold with the rest of their former crew. From the look of his clothing he had come incredibly close to doing just that.

But none of that mattered now. Morris was alive, and would need to be dealt with. The job wasn’t done. “This time you can deal with me,” Shaw said. He gently placed Flynn on the sand and pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the ache in his legs that dared him to sink back to his knees. There was no option to rest now, no choice but to finish this.

“Might as well get you out of the way,” Morris agreed. “It’ll be quick work to slit his throat once I’m through with you.”

“You will have to kill me first,” Shaw informed him matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure you understand what that means. I'm not tied up and you’ve already abandoned the element of surprise. It’s not looking good for you.” Not that he harbored any hope of convincing Morris to surrender, but fair was fair; everyone deserved a warning.

“I’d listen to him,” Flynn said weakly. “Mean little fists, that one. An’ he bites.”

Shaw spared him a reproachful glance, wrecked by the smile that tugged at the corners of his mouth and threatened to reveal him. “Your turn to be quiet and let me save _you_,” he said.

With a tired half-nod and a pained hiss, Flynn let his head fall back to the sand. “I’ll jus’… hold down the beach while you two settle this. Sound good? S’good, yeah.”

“Between the two of us, I’m the only one with a blade,” Morris pointed out rather redundantly. For dramatic effect he tossed the dagger from one hand to the other. He really was an idiot. “Care to rethink those odds?”

Without a warning he lunged, aiming the dagger at Shaw’s chest, extending his entire upper body in one rushed, poorly-planned strike, and overextending himself almost instantly. It was child’s play to disarm him. Shaw grabbed his outstretched arm with one hand and spun into him, knocking him on the jaw with his elbow as his back met Morris’ front. At the same time he twisted the delicate bones of Morris’ wrist, forcing him to drop the dagger in the sand. With a startled yelp Morris stumbled back, and Shaw let him go. He turned around to look down on the hunched figure before him.

“Didn’t even bite‘m,” Flynn complained from the ground.

Shaw couldn’t hide his smirk. He bent to pick up the dagger. “I save that for special occasions.”

“Oh, that’s… that’s incentive to live, that is,” Flynn muttered.

But it seemed Morris wasn’t quite finished. “I don’t need a knife to take you down!” he screeched. Arms thrown wide, he ran headlong toward Shaw, who easily sidestepped the pathetic attack. As he barreled past, Shaw kicked out, hitting him with the flat of his foot and sending him sprawling face-first into the surf.

“You’ve had the advantage of numbers up ‘til now,” Shaw explained, feigning a calm he didn’t feel inside. “And you’ve never faced me on equal terms.” Closer to equal now, at least, beneath the weight of exhaustion, privation, and slowly-ebbing fear.

Morris tried to stand, but Shaw, in a moment of inspired pettiness, struck him soundly in his left hip. Right where he was almost certain Morris had been wounded in the past, giving him his pronounced limp. A deep puncture, Shaw had theorized, or maybe a bit of leftover bullet shrapnel. Whatever it was, the injury had left its mark; Morris howled in agony, clutching the spot and rolling onto his side to protect himself.

“You tried to drown us.” Shaw could feel his anger rising like a tide, making the blood pound in his ears, in his veins, threatening to steal his breath. He tossed the dagger aside. “You killed my men. You beat us. You whipped Flynn, and you threatened to whip me.” He kicked Morris again, and this time he allowed himself to enjoy the pain he’d caused. There was something deeply satisfying about the simplicity of it, of basking in the satisfaction, just this once. Giving a little back to someone who had caused him to suffer so much. The parts of him that had been humiliated, exposed, and hauled out into the harsh light of day demanded vindication, and he was too exhausted inside and out to stop himself anymore.

He knelt beside the huddled, half-burned wretch at his feet. “I really should kill you,” he said, lowering his voice until he was almost whispering. He wasn’t above it by any means; he had done far worse things for far worse reasons, and while he couldn’t claim to be proud of all or even most of it, he thought he might be alright with _this_.

Morris swung his fist and managed to catch the very edge of Shaw’s chin with his knuckles. The blow glanced off with a lingering sting, but Shaw wasn’t worried about that. He’d struck back before the pain even registered, wrapping both hands around Morris’ sweat-slick neck, the skin beneath his fingers streaked with ash and stinking of char. He registered all of these things as mere details, irrelevant notes in the manual on quick, efficient murder he was about to write as he moved to straddle the mutineer’s barrel chest. Morris _deserved_ to die. Everything narrowed down to the face beneath him turning pink, and then red, and darkening still to a grotesque shade of purple as he squeezed and _squeezed_ the life from this man he had come to hate so much.

Morris clawed desperately at whatever he could reach, one arm trapped beneath Shaw’s thigh, and the other uselessly pulling at the fingers that choked the life from him second by second. His eyes were bulging and bloodshot, and his legs kicked wildly in the sand. He made terrible sounds, gurgling and hissing as the last of his air escaped his lungs, but Shaw ignored all of it. With his hands wrapped around Morris’ neck he could only hear the steady thrum of his own blood. The rage that felt like the roar of an endless wave in his ears, and burned him just beneath the skin, hotter than the sun overhead.

“Shaw.”

He barely heard his name through the roar of his own anger, distant and muffled like a dream, and had enough presence of mind to grunt, barely offering an acknowledgement that he’d heard anything at all.

“Shaw.”

How long had it been since he’d started? How many precious seconds of life did Morris have left before it was all over? Before he was just a bloated lump of flesh lying in the sand, and Shaw was _finally_ rid of him?

“Mathias!”

“_No!_” he growled through his teeth, clenching them so hard the pressure sent sparks of pain leaping through his jaw.

In the second it took to draw a ragged breath and blink back the sweat in his eyes, Shaw snapped back like a bowstring. He released Morris from the deadly grip on his tree trunk of a throat and sat back on his chest, his own lungs heaving for air almost as powerfully as Morris’.

When he turned—and he did, eventually, when he remembered where he was—it was to give Flynn a look that could only be described as pathetically confused. His hands were shaking, and his arms felt weak. It had been a long time since he’d lost control of himself like that.

Hadn’t it?

Flynn didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong, however, and Shaw wondered if he even could anymore. “I’ll… cheer you on, if this is what you want,” Flynn said, grunting a little as he tried to sit up. “But is it?”

In a flash, Shaw’s anger flared like a stoked furnace, fueled by an inexplicable sense of shame that was almost overwhelming. “Don’t give me that high-and-mighty bullshit!” he snarled. His fists clenched until he felt his fingernails bite into the skin. It didn’t stop the shaking, but some part of him knew nothing would.

Flynn shook his head, making the strings of his wet hair drag through the sand. “No, not—” He winced and fell back again. “Not what I meant.”

It took several long seconds of staring blankly, half-focused on the sight of Flynn’s prone and vulnerable form lying in the sand, before Shaw snapped his mouth shut again. He swallowed, and grimaced at the way the walls of his throat stuck; the sickly feel of it that recalled too many memories he’d prefer to forget.

“Then say what you mean,” he said, not entirely unkindly. Flynn’s eyes were half-lidded and struggling to stay open. There was a knot of concern in Shaw’s gut that twisted at the sight of him, but everything in his head still felt like it was being doused in the same stifling, clinging heat each time he took another breath, and he couldn’t seem to bring himself back down again. He could _feel_ his blood under his skin, pounding along with the drumbeat of his heart.

“They’ll hang him back in Boralus,” Flynn managed to pant. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting some pain Shaw couldn’t source from the injuries he could actually see. “He’ll sit in a cell… plenty of time to regret what he’s done. It won’t be quick.” When he opened his eyes again they were clear and full of concern, and Shaw’s shoulders relaxed from the tight hunch he hadn’t realized he was holding onto. He wanted to go to Flynn and take him in his arms again, but it wasn't the right time. It never seemed to _be_ the right time.

“I just—I don’t want you to regret the choice you make here,” Flynn finished with a hitch that turned into a groan. He said his piece and sagged as though it had cost him all the energy he had, but his blue-green eyes were still focused on Shaw, still watching him with a question Shaw himself couldn’t answer. _Was_ this what he wanted? He’d never quibbled over the subtle differences between a righteous kill and an outright murder in the past; it wasn’t his job to have misgivings about such things. But even he could recognize that this was different. _He_ was different, and he didn’t like it.

After what felt like far too long to be sitting there, straddling a half-dead man in the sand, Shaw blew out a long breath and ran a hand through his hair, rough and knotted from the salt water. He could only imagine how he must look, drenched in sweat and shaking, bruised, bloody, and half naked. But for the dire state of their circumstances it might have been worth a laugh, if only for the sake of having something to laugh _at_. “You may have a point,” he said quietly, speaking more to himself than to Flynn. He stood, releasing Morris, who took a deep, rasping breath and rolled miserably onto his side.

“We need to get you some help—” he started to say to Flynn, before a punch to his thigh caught him by surprise and left him momentarily speechless. He whirled around to find Morris, half-lying on his back with a feral snarl twisting his already grisly face, curled at the waist and holding the dagger Shaw had dropped. The blade flashed red, and Shaw had a curious moment of confusion before the pain registered and he looked down to find blood streaking his pants. A deep gash, dark with welling blood, stared back at him.

His knee gave out and he fell to the sand, still staring at the wound as though he couldn’t comprehend where it had come from. As though it had just _appeared_. When he finally thought to look up again Morris was bringing the dagger down for a second attack, this time aiming the blade at Shaw’s exposed chest. Shaw caught his wrist in the air and wrenched his entire arm, forcing Morris to twist his whole body as he shrieked in pain. Without missing a beat Shaw reached for the dagger with his other hand and swung it back toward Morris, burying it deep in the side of his thick neck. The shrieking stopped.

Shaw let go, and Morris’ body sagged under its own weight. The blade of the dagger protruded from the other side of his neck, and the sand around them slowly turned a familiar shade of scarlet. In seconds the surf rose again to wash it away, and Shaw knelt where he was, oddly transfixed by the sight.

“Mathias.”

He blinked.

“Your leg,” Flynn said. He sounded worried now, and he tried—and failed—to sit up again.

Shaw nodded numbly. The pain in his leg was a sharp and throbbing ache; Morris had missed the artery, but the wound was still bleeding heavily. Shaw shifted his other leg around so that he could tear his pants from the knee to the cuff and create a makeshift bandage. The cloth was filthy, salty, and would be rough against his wound, but he didn’t have any other choice.

“You alright?” Flynn asked.

No, he was far from alright. “I’m fine,” he lied, swallowing past that same disgusting dryness. The temptation to drink a bit of seawater came over him for just a few seconds, if only to wet his throat. A single sip wouldn’t do much harm—he’d swallowed more than that just trying to escape the burning ship—but it would be far from pleasant. And likely counterproductive, in the end. 

Then he remembered their little camp, and the water Flynn had collected in the empty coconut shells. “I’ll be right back,” he said as he struggled to stand. “Wait here.”

“Don’t have many options, mate,” Flynn mumbled.  
  
  
  


The mutineers had kicked sand over the fire to douse it, for reasons that Shaw could only guess were steeped in simple pettiness, and rooted through anything else they could find. It wasn’t much. Shaw located Flynn’s coconuts-turned-canteens and sighed heavily when he found them empty. It had taken him the better part of ten minutes to half-walk, half-drag himself twenty yards down the beach. There was no way he’d make it to the pond and back again.

It was unusually frightening to face the fact that he was probably going to die. Flynn was almost certainly bleeding internally, and Shaw himself was still losing blood from Morris’ last attempt to kill him. They weren’t going anywhere, and they had no means to escape the island now that the ship was a charred and smoking wreck. Soon even that would disappear below the waves, and Shaw, Morris, and Flynn would be all that remained of the terrible things that had happened aboard.

Well, at least he could die on his own terms. He slowly made his way back to where Flynn was lying in the sand, one excruciating step at a time. It was pure agony. He collapsed on his side when he finally reached him, and pressed his forehead to Flynn’s bare shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Flynn’s eyes were closed, but he was still breathing. He shook his head just enough for Shaw to see. “Not your fault.”

“How is your back?”

That drew a huff of laughter from Flynn, before he winced and settled again. “...Least of my worries,” he mumbled. He pried one eye open to look sidelong at Shaw. “Your leg?”

“The least of my worries,” Shaw repeated.

“Mm,” Flynn hummed, “‘m sorry too.”

“For what?” Shaw lifted his head from Flynn’s shoulder and sat up on his elbow so that he could look down at him. Not that it did much good; Flynn’s eyes were closed again.

When he didn’t answer, Shaw gently shook his arm. “Flynn? What are you sorry for?”

The silence that followed was filled with an excess of noise, from the steady rush of the waves to the rustling palm leaves overhead. Even the gulls and skittering lizards added their own interruptions to what was quite possibly the worst sound Shaw had ever heard: nothing.

“Flynn?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I asked about 6 people whether or not I should end the chapter where I did, and the vote was unanimous. So it's their fault.
> 
> I'm thinking just one more chapter. If that changes I'll note it at the start of the next one, but I don't foresee that happening.


	9. Chapter 9

Shaw brushed his hand over Flynn’s forehead, wiping away the sand and the salt-sticky strands of his hair. He wasn’t dead. Not yet, anyway. But it wouldn’t be long now. Shaw didn’t harbor any hope that he would wake again on his own.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, uselessly. Flynn wouldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter. Nothing really seemed to matter anymore. He was overcome by a sense of numbness, a cold creeping its way up his body that he thought must have as much to do with the blood he was still losing as the understanding of what he’d already lost.

The waves continued to lap at the shore, no more than distant white noise to Shaw’s ears. They kept their own rhythm, coming and going, hissing as they receded and returning again with a rush. Small bubbles popped in the sand and foam blew away on the breeze, and everything simply fell together into one long sound without interruption.

That was, until something broke through, finding its way into the last corner of Shaw’s mind that could spare the focus necessary to recognize what he was hearing.

It was too familiar not to know it the moment he heard the sound again; a gryphon’s telltale cry, carried on the wind and drawing closer. Shaw’s heart leapt in his throat and he scrambled to sit up, cursing his injured leg when he found he could no longer stand. He searched the sky for any sign of the beast and its rider, and after a few seconds he spotted them both. He could see the beast drawing closer, grey wings illuminated against the sky, and the rider’s black hair shining in the afternoon sun. He recognized the familiar green and gold armor that adorned the gryphon’s breast.

Taelia Fordragon was already dismounting before her gryphon had managed to come to a stop on the sand. She ran full-tilt down the beach toward them, and only slowed so that she could drop to her knees beside Flynn. “What’s happened?” she asked. She tried to reach for him, but Shaw grabbed her wrist and stopped her for reasons he didn’t fully understand.

“He’s dying. He needs a healer, now,” he said. “Where did you come from?”

“The _Wind’s Redemption_. It’s about twenty miles out, along with half the fleet,” she answered. “I was on recon. Spotted smoke on the horizon.” She gestured to the ship smoldering offshore.

Of course! It had been days since the mutiny, and the ship was well overdue; with the Alliance spymaster aboard, every effort would have been made to locate them as quickly as possible. Shaw had his doubts that Wyrmbane, Jes-Tereth, and the others had given one lick about Flynn’s whereabouts, but they couldn’t afford to lose Shaw. Not with the sort of information he was privy to. One more flaw in Morris’ brilliant plan. It was a small favor to the world that the man was dead.

“Can you get him back to the ship?” he asked, pointing to her gryphon, which was busy picking at Morris’ burnt clothing. A part of him wondered if the beast would actually eat him, given the chance. Another part sincerely hoped it might.

Taelia nodded. “Galeheart’s the swiftest gryphon in Kul Tiras,” she told him with all the confidence Shaw would have expected of Bolvar’s daughter. But she glanced back at the gryphon over her shoulder and frowned.

“What is it?”

Offering him an apologetic look, she said, “We’ll fly faster with only two.”

He didn’t even hesitate. “Leave me here, take him,” he told her. They didn’t have time to worry about the details. Flynn was dying.

But Taelia didn’t seem happy with his suggestion, despite how much it obviously pained her to refuse. It made sense, Flynn was her friend after all. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” she said. She didn’t bother to mention that there was a decent chance he’d bleed out before she returned if nothing was done. The wound was still seeping through his makeshift bandage, and showed no signs of stopping any time soon. Morris may not have hit the artery, but his haphazard aim had done more than enough damage anyway, it seemed.

“Take him and go,” he repeated more firmly, “that’s an order.”

She chewed on her lower lip, her eyes darting back and forth between Flynn and Shaw for several seconds before she stood up and jogged back to the gryphon. Shaw watched as she dug deep and pulled something from a saddlebag before returning to where he lay, dropping to her knees a second time and kicking sand across them both. “Here, take this.”

There was a small glass vial in her outstretched hand, filled with a viscous red fluid that almost seemed to glow in the sunlight. Shaw recognized the healing potion right away, and could even identify its potency from the particular shade of bright scarlet. It was a medium-strength mixture, made from a base of goldclover. It wouldn’t do much, but it would keep him alive. Probably even until she returned. He nodded. “Go.”

She had a surprisingly easy time hefting Flynn’s limp body up onto the gryphon’s back. The beast helped as well, crouching on its belly so that Taelia could drape him across the saddle. Shaw imagined it probably wasn’t the first time any of them had found themselves in similar straits, although he would have hoped previous occasions were under slightly better circumstances. He sat in the sand and watched as she secured Flynn to the saddle, feeling useless, angry with himself for being so weak.

When he uncapped the potion it sloshed over his shaking hand, and he licked the spilled fluid from his skin, tasting salt and blood. He could only hope most of it was his own. The potion went down easy, just as it was designed to. He had never been fond of the flavor. Taelia mounted the gryphon behind Flynn, one arm slung across his back to hold him steady.

“Don’t drop him,” he said. It was probably pointless to bother, and he could only imagine what Taelia must think of him. Of the state they were in. He just needed to say _something_. Because even if they reached the ship quickly, there was no guarantee Flynn would survive. The best healers in the Alliance could be aboard, the king himself could call upon the Light to heal Flynn’s wounds, and it wouldn’t make any difference if his body simply gave up the fight.

But Taelia only nodded gravely. “Don’t die,” she returned. The gryphon beat its wings twice, blowing sand across the beach, and then leapt back into the sky. They climbed high and then caught the wind, and Shaw watched all three as they grew smaller and smaller. He watched until he lost sight of the dark speck between the clouds and the shimmering reflection of the afternoon sun on the water.

The potion was working already. Shaw fell back against the sand and groaned. He could _feel_ the flesh of his thigh knitting, and it was not a sensation he enjoyed. Still, he supposed it was preferable to death.

The sun was still high enough that he was forced to close his eyes against the glare, and he slung his arm across his face just to give himself a little bit of darkness. It was dangerous to sleep; the potion would help his wound, but not fully heal it. He was still weak, still very dehydrated, and yet the lull of the waves and the soft wind overhead…

  
He woke with a start, at first uncertain of his surroundings, and then briefly panicked by them. He shivered—not cold, but overcome by the reminder; that Morris’ body was lying only a few feet away; that Flynn might already be dead aboard the _Wind’s Redemption_. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to swallow, but his throat was still dry, and his lips felt raw and cracked. Water. That was what he needed.

With a grunt and some other sounds he’d be too ashamed to remember later, Shaw hauled himself onto his stomach. He took a moment to catch his breath, and then shifted to his hands and knees and stood up. The wound in his leg appeared smaller, crusted over in dried blood and thankfully no longer bleeding. Nearby a host of seagulls were watching him closely, and he frowned. “Not today,” he told them. They waddled off toward Morris instead as Shaw started to limp slowly toward the edge of the jungle.

It was cooler beneath the shade of the trees, but that did nothing to ease the thirst that clawed at his throat. He imagined dunking his entire head into the pond, or simply falling in and letting it wrap around him, but then the reminder of how easily he’d fallen asleep before made him reconsider. When Taelia Fordragon returned, the last thing he wanted was for her to find him, drowned and half-naked, floating face-down in a pond.

Some unseen creatures rustled through the undergrowth, fleeing the shambling wreck of a man slowly dragging himself toward the water. He made it there in just under what he estimated to be half an hour, promptly falling on his knees in the sandy soil and plunging his hands into the cool water the moment he was close enough.

The first splash against his face was like being reborn. He opened his mouth for the second, just to feel the water on his tongue, and then cupped his hands and drank deeply. He drank until he thought he might be sick, until his arms shook and he was forced to stop and catch his breath. The water chased back so much of his weariness and discomfort—enough, even, that he started to notice other nagging concerns. Food might be good, he thought idly. They would undoubtedly have something for him aboard the _Redemption_, even if it was only more hardtack.

There would be work to do before he could rest. Responsibilities to see to before he could stop and eat and take a moment to remind himself of who he was once he left the island. A full accounting of the mutiny would undoubtedly be at the top of that list. He could only imagine Wyrmbane’s reaction to receiving him in such a state.

With that mildly amusing thought in mind, Shaw reached down and cupped more water in his hands. He washed his face again, his neck, and then his arms. The potion had taken care of most of his smaller injuries, but it still stung when he rubbed his hands over the wounds on his wrists. Those would take longer to heal on their own, or bit more magical assistance than a simple potion could provide.

Still crouching, he washed his skin in all the places he could easily reach and then leaned down to run some water over his hair. It was more difficult than he had anticipated. The wound in his thigh ached, threatening to reopen if he moved too quickly. Rinsing away all the salt and sand required a bit of creative stretching if he wanted to avoid bleeding all over the jungle floor.

He had just turned his head to the side, allowing the last of the water to drip from his hair, when he spotted a rock. There were rocks all around the pool, of course, but this rock seemed more familiar than most for reasons he couldn’t immediately place. It was rounded at the top, sloping down to a taper almost reminiscent of a shield. Where it lay in the sand it was surrounded by much smaller rocks, piled so closely and so deliberately that it was clear they had been placed there on purpose.

Shaw squinted. It couldn’t be.

He wiped the last of the water from his face and slowly stood. On legs that were still shaking far too much for his liking, he made his way around the pond, over to where the strange pile of rocks sat in the sand. There were leaves and other random debris scattered around, mixed in with the smaller stones and sticking out at odd angles. To anyone but an idiotic mutineer with more swagger than sense it would have screamed _hidden treasure_.

He sighed and shook his head. It was no wonder Flynn never had a copper to his name if this was how he hid his valuables.

Once the other stones were out of the way, the larger rock could be pushed aside, though not without a considerable effort on his part. He stopped to catch his breath and wipe the sweat from his brow, and then began digging through the loose sand that had been exposed. When his fingers touched cloth he froze.

“You unbelievable liar,” he muttered fondly.

It was Flynn’s coat. In hindsight, he did vaguely recall that Flynn had told him about it, when they were lying on the beach, half-drowned and exhausted. Before Morris had interrupted, coming back to tempt fate one more time and paying for that mistake with his life. Shaw had barely been listening at the time, far more concerned with keeping Flynn awake and alive.

He tugged the long canvas duster from the hole and shook it out to dislodge most of the sand. The wool lining was more reluctant to let go of the small granules, but he didn’t really care. At that moment, holding it felt like touching something _real_, a tether that he desperately needed, though he didn’t entirely understand why. He balled it up around his arms and kept it close, guarding it as though someone might take it from him if he didn’t.

After that, and after stopping at the pond for one last drink to tide him over, he began the slow journey back to the beach. Along the way he decided that if Flynn was still alive when he made it to the _Wind’s Redemption_, he would need to have a few words with him about how to properly hide things he didn’t want others to find.

  
He sat on the beach to await his own rescue, arms draped across his knees, passively enjoying the sun hanging low over the water. Simply _existing_ wasn’t something he did often. Merely observing the world, rather than actively attempting to change it. It was interesting to him that _this_ should be the moment he started to really appreciate that luxury, when he was preparing to return to a life that made it more or less impossible.

Despite knowing she would return for him, when Taelia’s gryphon appeared on the horizon Shaw felt his heart give a nervous lurch. He was far more concerned with news of Flynn’s condition than his own rescue, but then he wondered if he could even tell the difference between the two anymore.

She landed soundly the second time, and the gryphon squawked triumphantly. “Flynn’s alright,” Taelia said, patting the bird’s neck to soothe it. “Nasty knock on the head, but they’re healing him now.”

Shaw knew he must have visibly relaxed, because Taelia gave him a sympathetic smile. “He’ll do that to you,” she said. Then she held out her hand. “Ready to go, Master Shaw?”

More than ready. Shaw gratefully reached out to clasp his hand in hers, but he stopped before he could swing his leg up over the saddle behind her. He would need two hands to hold on, regardless of how smooth the ride might be. “Just a moment,” he said, holding up a finger. He unrolled the coat and shook it out again before putting it on. It was a little loose in the shoulders, but it fit well enough. He was certain it wouldn’t actually get lost this time, at least.

“Looks good on you,” she said. A little voice somewhere in the back of Shaw’s mind warned him that she was being too familiar, already getting too close, and he struggled to ignore it. That same voice had made him push Flynn away. It had been wrong then, and he thought maybe it might be wrong now. In fact, he was beginning to wonder just _whose_ voice it really was.

“Thank you,” he said, making an effort to smile. He reached out for her hand again, and this time it was the soft _pat_ of something hitting the sand that kept him from climbing up behind her.

Shaw looked down; there, lying between his feet, was the small leather pouch that had contained the Zandalari artifact. The one Morris and his men had torn the ship apart trying to find. The one Flynn had claimed was in a barrel in the hold, when he must have known all along that it was wrapped up in his coat.

He realized then that Flynn must have planned the whole escape. Maybe even from the moment he and Shaw were brought back aboard the ship. He’d taken those lashes not only to protect Shaw, but to convince Morris that he was telling the truth. That he knew where the artifact was hidden, and he would trade its location if only the whipping would stop. The pain was real, Shaw had no doubts about that, but he wondered how many lashes Flynn had planned to endure before he broke down and begged them to cut him loose at any price. He wondered whether Flynn had any idea how many he could bear.

Shaw picked up the pouch and felt the weight of the artifact inside. Flynn _had_ said he was only interested in keeping it safe, he thought with a small laugh. He wondered how long Flynn had been suspecting that there might be a mutiny. It was unlikely he would ever admit to it, even if Shaw asked. In fact, it seemed like just the sort of foresight he would shrug off as a lucky guess if anyone bothered to point it out. An attitude that Shaw had always dismissed as a natural part of his childish antics. Now he wondered if he didn’t owe Flynn an apology for more than just landing them in this mess in the first place.

“Spymaster?” Taelia prompted.

Shaw took her hand and finally climbed onto the gryphon’s back. He tried not to tense as he wrapped his arms around her waist. “I’m ready,” he said.

The sudden leap into the sky pushed him down in the saddle, and his arms, so weak from swimming, fighting, and struggling to get Flynn breathing again, nearly slipped free. “Keep a tight grip!” Taelia warned him, shouting over the sudden roar of the wind.

The island grew smaller below them, and the sea spread to the horizon in every direction. He saw the camp, the dark spot against the sand that was Morris, and further in, the break in the jungle canopy that marked the small pond.

“Think you’ll miss it?” Taelia asked. There was a smile in her voice, as if she already knew the answer.

Shaw chose to be honest with her. She deserved that much after all she had done for them. “A bit,” he said to her back. “It was… peaceful. Most of the time, anyway.” It wasn’t really the island he would miss, of course. There were moments here and there, things that he knew would have to be left behind because they had no place in the life he was returning to. But she didn’t need to know any of that. He’d told her enough, he decided. The rest he would keep for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will probably be up soon, I'm pretty much jumping right into it after this one.


	10. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me tell you how pleased I am that this fic turned out to be 10 chapters. #oddlysatisfying
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading and commenting on this story. All the people cheering along is part of the reason I've worked so hard, and it's what makes me excited to keep writing more. Many many thanks especially to Cadoan, Eria, Daz, and Esther and probably at least 6 other people I'm forgetting. 💕
> 
> This turned out to be like, two and a half times the length of all the other chapters. I'd apologize, but I don't think anyone is going to complain.

Shaw leaned against the wooden pillar with his arms crossed over his chest. The cold tips of his fingers lay tucked within the wool lining of his coat.

Well, it was _Flynn’s_ coat, but Shaw had grown rather fond of it, and he was starting to wonder if he really wanted to give it back. The fact that he’d started thinking of it as _his_ seemed to indicate that no, he didn’t.

He was waiting outside the harbormaster’s office, staring at the closed door. It had been shut and locked for over an hour.

Shaw had begun his search for Flynn nearly the moment Taelia Fordragon’s gryphon touched down on the deck of the _Wind’s Redemption_. All previous thoughts of duty and responsibility were summarily pushed aside—along with several of the ship’s crew—until the spymaster found him.

It seemed they had taken Flynn to the captain’s cabin to be treated, and that was where Shaw found him, very much alive and fast asleep in Jes-Tereth’s bed.

_“He will need some time,”_ the draenei shaman had told him. _Some time_ had turned out to be the rest of the voyage back to Kul Tiras and then some. They were moored in Boralus Harbor for several hours before Shaw received word that Flynn had woken up. By that time he’d finally gone to make his report to Wyrmbane and General Feathermoon, and from there to the healer so that his own injuries could be dealt with properly. He’d only allowed them to heal the wound on his leg at first, until a priestess, far too perceptive for her own good, had sensed his deep weariness and ambushed him with the Light. Its incredible, all-encompassing warmth eased his aches, calmed his racing mind, and made it that much easier for them to subtly steer him in the direction of his own bunk. There he proceeded to fall asleep for the next fourteen hours.

Flynn went home during that time—wherever home happened to be at the moment. Shaw supposed it was conceivable that he lived aboard his ship; a little sloop aptly named the _Middenwake_. He considered going to check on him, but there was just too much to do. Too many inquiries, too many matters that demanded both his attention and subsequently his time. For three days he saw little else but the well-trod deck of the _Redemption_, and he was beginning to think he might never want to set foot on another ship again.

It was Wyrmbane who saved him from what likely would have been a spectacular burnout. Once all matters related to the mutiny had been settled, and any potential co-conspirators, buyers, or contacts tracked down and questioned, Shaw was summarily dismissed from duty for the remainder of the week. There was a time in his life when he would have argued with that decision. Now he found the only struggle was to hide the weary slump of his shoulders as he trudged down the gangplank.

Two nights in one of the better inns near Upton Borough was a world away from a cramped bunk on a ship that wouldn’t seem to stop _rocking_. In truth, it felt a bit like being back on a quiet island in the middle of the ocean. Shaw was left alone with his thoughts, alone with his memories for the first time in days. And it was there, in that silence, that he came to a decision.

The latch raised, and the door swung open, and suddenly there was Flynn. Shaw tried to ignore the little leap of joy in his chest that seemed to steal his breath—he wasn’t _fifteen_ for Light’s sake.

Flynn sauntered down the steps to Cyrus Crestfall’s office, looking… not chastened, but certainly not happy, either. He pulled his rolled-up sleeves back down to his wrists and turned toward the harbor. His eyes fell upon on Shaw and he stopped.

“Now, that’s _definitely_ mine,” he said very matter-of-factly, pointing to the coat.

“I found it,” Shaw replied.

“Where I left it.”

Shaw hummed and shouldered away from the pillar. “I recall reading something about salvage rights.”

“Mate,” Flynn laughed, “that’s to do with wrecks. The term you’re looking for is _finders keepers_, and I think you’ll find it’s better left to little children and pirates.” He came closer, and Shaw couldn’t help the anxious shiver that rolled down his spine. Flynn slid his fingertips along the seam between the wool and battered oilskin, indirectly tracing a path down Shaw’s chest as well. “It looks good on you. Thinking of becoming a pirate yourself?”

“So everyone says, and no, probably not.”

“Everyone?” Flynn asked, arching an eyebrow curiously. He had a new scar, just to the right of his left temple. Shaw couldn’t recall whether he’d caused it himself or if it was a parting gift from the burning ship.

“How’s your back?” he asked, rather than answering the question that would most likely only lead to more questions. “And your head.”

“Head’s the same mess it’s always been, back’s all healed up. That Light makes for a far better patch job than saltwater and a few torn linens. In fact, I think it might’ve caught a few things the last medic left behind.” Flynn cocked his head. “Your leg?”

“Just another scar.”

The look he received in response to that was strange. Shaw found he couldn’t bear it for very long before the need to look away became almost overwhelming. It was too much like… 

Pity.

“I wanted to ask you something,” he said, turning the focus away from whatever it was Flynn evidently found so pitiable about him. “And I had some things to discuss with you. But I owe you an apology first. What I said on the beach—”

“Apologize over dinner,” Flynn said. He turned on his heel and started toward the market, beckoning Shaw to follow. “I’m famished, and you look like you haven’t eaten in days.”

  
Dinner turned out to be a small paper sack of whatever meats Flynn could get prepared on a stick. The whole way through the market he complained bitterly of being cold, whether to get them both headed inside or to passive-aggressively demand the return of his coat. Either way it worked; they made their purchases and returned to Shaw’s rented room at the edge of Upton Borough, happy to eat in peace where it was warm and private.

For some reason, though his room did have a table and chairs, they chose to eat on the floor. Shaw saw no real reason to question it, and Flynn offered no explanation of his own. They sat together on a large, braided rug in the center of the room, close to the fire. It was quite comfortable, actually.

“This is much better than wild pig,” Shaw said as he licked a bit of grease from his fingers.

Flynn fixed him with a flat, unimpressed stare. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, “someone ate it all before I could have any.”

Shaw pointed an empty stick at him. “You left.” He picked out another skewered shank of something he thought might be raptor, and added, “The scavengers got most of it anyway.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?” Flynn asked, winking as he took a bite.

They fell back into a comfortable silence, the crackle of the fire beside them and the clear night sky peering down through the windows. Shaw decided it was the right time to finally broach the uncomfortable topic of his part in enabling the mutiny. “I wanted to apologize for what happened on the ship,” he said, tossing his last stick into the fire.

“As I recall, you already did. A few times.”

“A real apology, Flynn.”

Flynn blew out a relieved sigh and feigned wiping sweat from his forehead. “Am I glad you said it first, mate. I was worried you’d forgotten. Didn’t fancy going back to calling you _Shaw_ all the time.”

“I’m being serious,” Shaw said, frowning at him.

“Do you want the last one?” Flynn held up the paper sack, with its top curled down to show a single stick poking out. “I think it’s chicken. Don’t quote me on that, it might be… Oh, no, that’s a tentacle, isn’t it. Right.”

“Flynn.”

“Leave it, alright? I’ve apologized, you’ve apologized, we’re square, Mathias.”

But Shaw wouldn’t just accept amnesty for a mistake that could have cost them their lives. “I didn’t see the warning signs,” he argued, “I didn’t stay alert. What happened was my fault.”

“Why does anyone have to be at fault?” Flynn demanded, pushing himself up off the floor and standing. It left Shaw in the awkward position of having to crane his neck to look up at him. “Sometimes you just _screw up_, it happens.”

“Not—”

“Don’t say it, Mathias. I will hit you with this very wet bag of meat.” Flynn knelt down again, reaching out to set a hand on Shaw’s shoulder, his thumb lightly brushing the pulse point on his neck. “It’s done. Anything you said, anything you _did_, is forgiven. All of it.”

But Shaw still felt as though there was an anxious knot growing in his chest, forcing the air from his lungs a little faster with each breath he took. He held Flynn’s steady gaze, struggling to find the right words and realizing that all he had left were the wrong ones. “I can’t forgive myself,” he said quietly.

Flynn watched him for a moment, and then he dropped his other knee to the rug and leaned in, just enough to lightly press his lips to Shaw’s. And Shaw, like a drowning man clinging to a bit of debris in a storm, threw himself into it. He grabbed at Flynn’s shirt and pulled him closer, rising up onto his knees to press their bodies together and just _touch_ him. When he felt Flynn’s hands wrap around his back he made a desperate, breathless noise. His fingers wound into Flynn’s hair, beneath his collar, seeking warmth and the affirmation of flesh beneath his hands.

Flynn made a curious sound into Shaw’s mouth, and he pulled away from the kiss just enough to ask, “When was the last time you did this, Mathias?”

“Did what?” Shaw breathed, his mouth still seeking Flynn’s even as Flynn dodged away from him.

“Any of it.”

Ages. Years, probably. A decade or more, at least. “I don’t know,” he admitted. That wasn’t what he wanted to think about right now. He wanted Flynn’s lips, his tongue, his teeth…

Flynn stopped. He ignored Shaw’s attempts to draw him into another kiss, and finally Shaw realized what he was doing and gave up. He dropped his forehead to Flynn’s shoulder and just breathed. “What did I do this time?” he asked, his voice muffled in the hollow between them.

“Nothing. C’mon.” Flynn stood, drawing Shaw with him. “Over to the bed with you.”

“You’re not planning to tuck me in and kiss me goodnight, are you?” Shaw asked. He was aiming for wry humor, but he knew there was a bit too much disappointment in his voice to really sell it.

“Maybe later,” Flynn said, smiling a little. He still seemed so serious, so intent on something, and it was making Shaw nervous. There was very little in the world that bothered him more than being left out of the loop.

He allowed himself to be pressed back into the bed, all of his internal alarms screaming out a warning that _something_ was going to go wrong. Like Flynn, his gloves, coat, bracers, and boots had already been discarded when they entered the room, leaving him unusually exposed—for anywhere apart from an isolated island in the middle of the ocean, anyway. He felt vulnerable, regardless of how much his skin screamed for any sort of touch. But he wanted Flynn, wanted to be looked at and adored by Flynn, and he was also horrified by the thought of either. “Sorry,” he muttered without thinking.

“I’m going to take a piece of clothing for every apology,” Flynn said. He was up on his knees, straddling Shaw’s legs. “And since I’m also counting all the times you said you were sorry back on the island, that totals up to…” He looked up, pretending to count. “Well, let’s just say you’ll owe me.”

He started with the shirt. “Lift,” he said, and Shaw raised his arms over his head, allowing Flynn to slowly draw the loose cloth up and over. He dropped it to the floor, and then bent down to press his mouth to the center of Shaw’s chest, just above the breastbone. “That’s better,” he said softly.

“Flynn, you don’t have to.”

Flynn shushed him. Using only his mouth, he slowly traced a line down the center of Shaw’s chest, over his stomach, until his lips met the next piece of clothing. “I want do this for you,” he whispered. “To give you this.” His tongue traced the outline of Shaw’s navel, making him shiver. “Let go for just a little while, Mathias, and let me take care of you. Let me give you what you need. All you have to do is lie back and feel, and I’ll do all the thinking for us both.”

Shaw swallowed and stared hard at the ceiling. What Flynn proposed was more than he had ever dared to hope he might be offered, and much more than he’d ever thought himself capable of giving. Only, despite the fear, despite that same voice telling him _no_, Shaw found that he actually, genuinely _wanted_ to. He had no doubts left that Flynn would protect him—he’d done it several times already. Or that he would keep those awful secrets he’d stumbled upon in the dark. Shaw had been at his weakest, his most vulnerable, and all Flynn had done was sit and listen, and then offer up his own soul in return.

He nodded, and his assent was met with a low, rumbling sound from Flynn that pooled hot in Shaw’s gut.

The next to go were his breeches. Flynn peeled the leather from his hips, sliding it down his thighs until it rippled like thick cream at his knees. He gathered it all in his callused hands and gave it one last, quick tug. The soft leather was cast aside a moment later to join his shirt somewhere on the floor. “Mathias,” he huffed, “you’re incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever been so lucky.”

Such sweet words should have made his heart flutter, but instead they only made it race. It was all wrong, all backwards. Flynn was the one who needed reassurance, kindness. He’d suffered so much. Shaw tried to sit up. “But, you were hurt, you need—”

“You’ll give me what I need when I need it,” Flynn reassured him, pressing him back to the bed with one gentle hand. He lifted one of Shaw’s legs and pressed his lips to the inside of his ankle. His beard tickled. “Tonight is for you.”

Slowly, so very, _very_ slowly, Flynn drew his mouth up the length of Shaw’s leg, pausing briefly to worship the soft skin on the back of his knee before continuing, up and up and _up_. His lips felt like silk on Shaw’s thigh, and the touch left him trembling. He threw an arm over his eyes to block out—well, to block out everything.

“Look at me,” Flynn said gently. He reached out and carefully lifted Shaw’s arm away from his face. Their eyes met, and he smiled. “Good. Watch me.” He dipped his head to place another kiss, this one open-mouthed and even warmer than the others, on the spot just below Shaw’s navel. Shaw twitched, and Flynn smiled up at him.

His underclothes were next, and once again Flynn took his time, fingers curled around the cloth as he followed every agonizing inch with a kiss, or a nuzzle, or a gentle nip that left Shaw gasping. Between them Shaw’s cock lay hard and curved against his belly, aching to be touched, as desperate for it as the rest of him. Flynn pushed his palm up along the length of it and rumbled approvingly. “You’re so hard for me already,” he whispered, sounding awed. His fingers curled around the shaft and Shaw couldn’t stop himself from bucking his hips. He fisted the blankets and hissed through his teeth, fighting for control.

“Beautiful,” Flynn said, and Shaw felt his face heat. He turned away to look at the wall. “You are,” Flynn insisted. “Scars and all.”

He wasn’t. He really wasn’t. Those scars—ribbons and knots of flesh that had been torn open and healed over time and again—were nothing more than grim reminders of the past. An ugly, twisted map, pointing the way to some of his worst mistakes. The ones inside were even worse. “Yours are more recent,” he said, eager to shift the focus away from himself. He failed when it only served to remind him of his part in putting those marks on Flynn’s back. “He whipped you.”

“And if you recall, Mathias, that was exactly what I wanted him to do. So you’re not to blame for that, either.”

Shaw breathed out an unsteady sigh at the ceiling, nodding enough to hopefully convince Flynn that he accepted this ill-gotten absolution. But it quickly became clear to him that Flynn wasn’t buying it.

“I wanted to protect you,” he said. The reproach in his voice was soft, but brooked no argument. “I’d like if you didn’t take that away from me.”

Shaw met his eyes, and this time when he accepted the reprieve, he meant it.

“Good.” Flynn smiled and cupped Shaw’s neck with one wide palm. He drew a path with his eyes, taking in the planes and angles of Shaw’s body, the soft places that were never visible before.

Shaw was shivering again, but this time it wasn’t stopping on its own, like it had before.

Flynn trailed his hand from Shaw’s neck to the center of his abdomen, stilling him with his warmth. “You’re doing so well, Mathias,” he said. “Being so good for me. Now, spread your legs.”

Something about the way he said _good_, the velvet-soft certainty of his words, reached inside Shaw and grasped a piece of him that he didn’t know existed. Something vulnerable and _right_, meant to be that way, and eager for such gentleness. It pooled in the depths of his belly, and made him want to plead for more. Every time he responded he was gifted with another touch, another slow slide of fingertips or the press of Flynn’s lips. He spread his legs and waited, no longer sure what he needed anymore besides more of what Flynn was giving him. More of everything.

Flynn pulled one of Shaw’s legs over his shoulder, hooking him at the knee while he held Shaw’s hips in his callused hands. Shaw felt the sudden touch of a tongue behind his balls and made a high, strangled sound. He clawed at the blankets and twisted against the slippery heat invading him and thrilling him, driving every coherent thought from his mind at once. Flynn’s tongue dragged across his skin, making him sweat, making him clench his teeth and _growl_. He held Shaw tight, keeping him steady as he worked him until Shaw thought he might scream. Flynn’s lips and tongue on his hole were the culmination of everything good he’d ever felt, and then he pressed a bit harder, and Shaw cried out pathetically. He clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Be loud for me,” Flynn said, speaking the words against his oversensitive skin. “I want to hear how much you love this.”

It was difficult to find the focus needed to move his hand, but Shaw managed it. And then Flynn drew the flat of his wide tongue up the length of his ass, all the way to his balls, and Shaw arched his neck and gasped so hard that it _hurt_. He trembled in Flynn’s hands, panting between each breath, moaning and _whining_ and so far beyond caring how much he hated himself for daring to take this pleasure and enjoy it without guilt.

Flynn licked and suckled, and Shaw pulled at the sheets until Flynn finally relented and offered him mercy. He lowered Shaw back down to the bed, barely more than a sweating, trembling wreck, and stood up.

Shaw lifted his head just enough to peer at Flynn over the flushed arch of his cock. He was too wrung out and breathless to find the words to ask why he’d stopped.

“Do you have something slick?” Flynn asked. He was patting down his pockets and frowning.

With a groan, Shaw managed to push himself up on one elbow and point to the other side of the room. “My bag,” he said. It was the small, canvas bag that he’d brought from Stormwind. Most nights it had nothing more than a few spare clothes and some extra weapons. Now it contained the few things he’d brought with him from the _Wind’s Redemption_—among them various oils for various purposes. Mostly his blades.

“Are any of these dangerous?” Flynn asked.

He shook his head. Not as they were, anyway. Combined, in some cases; mixed with food or wine, or brewed in a tea. Most were simply inert components of other mixtures.

Flynn returned with a bottle of clear, slightly oily-looking liquid. Shaw recognized it right away as the harmless extract of a common plant. It would warm quickly and stay slick, and just the thought of it coating Flynn’s length, glistening on his skin, made Shaw’s blood pound.

“_Look_ at you,” Flynn husked, untying the laces of his pants and reaching in to pull out his cock. It was thick and swollen, flushed dark and leaking generously at the tip. When Shaw whined a little it twitched in Flynn’s hand, and he cursed, squeezing himself tight. “Do something for me,” he said.

_Anything_. “What?” Shaw asked, his voice a little higher than he would have liked. His heart felt as though it might drum its way out of his chest at any moment.

Flynn tossed the bottle onto the bed. “Make yourself ready for me,” he said.

Shaw groaned. He bit his lip, feeling a blush of embarrassment creep down from his face, staining his shoulders and chest pink. Yet the desire to earn another touch, more gentle praise, won out. He set his feet flat on the bed and reached for the bottle, spreading his legs wider than before. With one hand he tipped some of the oil onto his fingers, and then reached down to where Flynn’s tongue had been only moments before. His own touch was nowhere near as hot as that, but he gasped and squirmed regardless, holding his balls up with one hand so he could reach down and push a finger inside himself.

Flynn spoke up; “See what you do to me, Mathias.” Shaw lifted his head to find him squeezing his cock, drawing his fist to the end and slowly sliding it back down again, leaving a wet trail across his knuckles. His pants had fallen around his knees, and he kicked them lower before stepping out of them entirely. He bit his lip above the unruly patch of his beard. “How much I want you. Keep going, love, you’re doing well.”

Shaw was still sitting up on his elbow, and at those words he let his head fall back and pressed deeper inside, pulling his knees back to spread himself even wider.

“Add another one for me,” Flynn said. His overshirt came off, followed swiftly by the thinner one underneath. Somewhere along the way his new scarf had disappeared. “That’s it.” He groaned. “You’re so beautiful like that, open and wet for me.”

Shaw felt the bed dip at the end, and he lifted his head to find Flynn kneeling between his feet. “Flynn…” he breathed, pushing his fingers in and slowly dragging them back out again. Almost ready to pretend they belonged to the man before him, rough and callused and hot. A deep ache was building within him. It drove away all those too-rational thoughts that threatened to burn him up without relief. 

“Tell me what you need,” Flynn said. He smoothed his palms across Shaw’s knees, back and forth, easing something deep within that Shaw had neglected for far too long.

Slowly the words came floating back to him, and Shaw blinked. What he needed? He needed _Flynn_. Needed him everywhere, around and within him, bearing him down, smothering him beneath his weight. He needed to feel enveloped and consumed. _Filled with him._

Instead, “I need you inside me,” came tumbling from his lips. “I need to feel more of you, please.”

Ever observant, Flynn asked, “What else.”

He was embarrassed to say. On some level he knew it was ridiculous that he should be lying there, legs thrown wide, too ashamed to admit what it was he craved. He flattened his mouth and fell back on the bed. His shoulder ached from holding him up, and his wrist was beginning to cramp, but he kept moving his fingers, kept doing as he’d been told.

“Mathias.”

Shaw groaned and hid his face with his other hand. “I want you to… come inside me. Please.”

Flynn moved up until he was between Shaw’s thighs. He bent down over him, mouth hovering so close to Shaw’s ear. “_Good boy_,” he whispered.

Shaw’s wrist finally gave out and he went slack. “_Light_,” he whined, “_please_, Flynn. I can’t wait any longer, I _can’t_—I—”

“On your side, sweetheart.”

Azeroth itself must have suddenly spun a turn for how fast Shaw moved to obey. He felt lightheaded, half-drunk from pleasure and a want so strong it was like a second thirst. Flynn settled in behind him, slipping the bottle from the bed and tipping some of the contents into his palm. But rather than going right to his cock, he pulled Shaw’s leg up onto his own knee and reached down to replace Shaw’s fingers with his own.

They were bigger, the knuckles broader, more like rope knots than delicate bones. He pushed inside slowly, the oil easing the way. At the top of the bed his outstretched arm molded to Shaw’s, and he wound their fingers together, holding him while he pushed his big fingers deeper than even Shaw had gone. “Tell me, Mathias. Tell me how it feels. Don’t keep it in your head.”

“It’s—_ah_—” Shaw’s cheeks burned and he tried to bury his face in the blanket. But like before, Flynn wouldn’t allow it. He crooked his fingers and drew a startled yelp from Shaw, jolting him with an unerring touch that made it clear he knew _exactly_ what he was doing. That he was in control of Shaw’s pleasure, just as he had promised. It was more of a relief than Shaw had ever expected it to be. He didn’t have to think, didn’t have to worry, didn’t have to plan. All he had to do was put himself in Flynn’s hands and do what he was told.

The awareness of that weight suddenly evaporating from his shoulders was like a dam shattering. He couldn’t have held back the flood if he tried. “It’s so good,” he groaned, pushing down against Flynn’s fingers. Behind him he could feel the hard steel of Flynn’s cock against the small of his back, leaking onto him, smearing him with precome and marking him for Flynn. “Yes—yes—please, right there—ah!” he gasped, shuddering when Flynn’s fingers wiggled against that same spot. “I don’t want to—ah, Flynn—I don’t want to come yet, not yet. Please—I want—with you inside me, please…”

Flynn pressed a kiss to Shaw’s cheek and said, “Keep talking, Mathias. You’re doing just what I want. You’re being so good for me. Do you like that?”

Shaw nodded furiously, and then he remembered what Flynn had told him, and said, “Yes, oh, _Light_, yes. I want—”

“Tell me what you want, love.”

_You’re being so good._

“I want to be good for you. Want you to hold me.” He wanted so badly it hurt. The need was like an electric current humming just beneath his skin. Every touch set a spark skipping across his nerves.

“You’re going to take all of me,” Flynn said, rolling his hips and dragging his cock along Shaw’s back. Like a brand across his skin. “My good boy. Say it, Mathias. Say it, and I’ll give you what you want.”

Shaw lost the battle to hold his head up; he let it fall back to the pillow and swallowed past the dry scratch of his throat. Flynn wanted him to say it, and he wanted Flynn to give him more, and that was really all there was left in his mind anymore. At that moment he would say or do just about anything.

His mouth worked silently around the words, and then he found his voice and bit out, “_Ah_—y—your good boy, _please_—_!_”

Flynn growled and withdrew his fingers. He shifted to take his cock and press the head to Shaw’s oversensitive hole. “Let me get slick for you, Mathias. Nice and slick so I can slide in deep. Do you want that?”

He wanted it more than he wanted to _breathe_. “Yes, yes, yes,” he babbled, alternately fisting his own cock and holding it tight to stave off the orgasm that waited just at the edge of his self control.

“Wait for me, just like that,” Flynn said. Shaw could hear him, the liquid slide of the oil over his erection, obscene in its near-silence between the occasional wet lick of his palm along his length.

Shaw bit his lip and whined. More of the oil was applied to his hole, and Flynn said, “Push out, Mathias, I want you to take me in easy. I want this to feel good for you.”

Shaw did as he was told, and he was rewarded with the head of Flynn’s cock slipping inside, eagerly swallowed by the tight grip of his body. The rest followed as easily as he promised it would, and Shaw made a reedy, breathless sound as Flynn bottomed out. “You’re so deep,” he gasped, “_fuck_, Flynn, you’re so deep.” Deep, just like he wanted it. So deep and _good_ that Shaw lost control completely. His fingers clenched in the sheets and his body went taut, and he came.

“_Oh_,” Flynn choked, pressing his forehead to the nape of Shaw’s neck. “Oh, Mathias, that—”

“I’m sorry,” Shaw said, shuddering through the last of his orgasm. He was gripped by a sudden and powerful shame that made him want to curl in on himself. All the ease he’d felt before began to evaporate like rain on hot cobblestone.

“No, Mathias, no,” Flynn said, reaching to cup Shaw’s face in his hand and turn him so that they could look at one another. “Do you know how it feels, seeing what my cock’s doing to you like that?” He gave a little shove, molding their bodies together from chest to knee. “You make me _ache_, Mathias. I could come just watching you like this.”

Lust surged back in to push the shame aside, and Shaw opened his mouth to accept a kiss, conceding to the tongue that licked and tasted him. “Will you,” he tried to ask, swallowing thickly after Flynn’s lips and tongue retreated. “Will you still…”

“Say it, Mathias. Tell me what you need.”

His cock gave an interested twitch; too soon, and not nearly soon enough. “Will you still come inside me?” he asked, hearing how weak and needy he sounded. His shame was all but forgotten. Flynn was holding him, Flynn was in and around him, in every one of his senses, and that was all that mattered.

“Of course, love. I’ll give you whatever you want,” Flynn said. “You’ve been so good.” He pulled out slowly, just enough to push back in again, and Shaw sighed. Bliss sang through his nerves like a siren’s song. His eyes were half-lidded and barely focused, but he watched Flynn, watched him bite his lip and fight to breathe evenly as he fucked Shaw slowly, drawing out and sliding back in again, deliberately keeping the same unhurried pace.

“It feels so big,” Shaw mumbled, awed by it, and by the lazy, easy way his body accepted everything Flynn was giving him. He felt drawn out to the edges of his being and then centered again by the slow drag of Flynn’s cock inside him. “Do I feel good for you?” he asked.

He caught a strange look from Flynn—not pity this time, but a sort of fond amusement. As though the question was so obvious that it didn’t bear asking. “You feel incredible, Mathias,” he said, grunting on another long, languid push. “Your whole body is open for me, eager for me.” He kissed him again, teasing the slight gap between Shaw’s lips with his tongue. “I want to watch you come for me again.”

He _wanted_ to come again, if for no other reason than _Flynn_ wanted it. He nodded almost drunkenly and opened his mouth for another kiss, making a small, pleading sound. His reward was Flynn’s tongue nearly plunging down his throat, his heavy breath in Shaw’s ear. His hand came up to hold Shaw’s neck and draw him closer, and distantly Shaw knew that some part of him should be alarmed by anyone putting a hand on his throat. He simply… didn’t care. He didn’t have to. Not here, in Flynn’s arms.

“Hold on,” Flynn said hoarsely, and Shaw reached up to grasp the back of his wrist. He pulled back and drove in again, harder than before, faster. Shaw gasped and bucked, and Flynn did it again. He began pounding into him from behind, hips slapping against Shaw’s ass, grunting with every thrust like some sort of beast. His hand tightened on Shaw’s throat—not enough to choke, but enough to keep him grounded in that moment, in the sensation of his thick cock slamming home every time.

Shaw could only cling to him and gasp, an endless chorus of _“ah—ah—ah!”_ over and over, as though each thrust was the first. It felt so good and so right, and all he wanted was to stay there, like that, with Flynn around him and in him, ready to spill all of his desire inside Shaw’s body and make him beg for more.

“Come for me, Mathias,” Flynn whispered in his ear. “Let me watch.”

He wanted to insist he couldn’t, not yet, but even as he opened his mouth to answer, Shaw realized that he was hard again. He was hard, and what’s more, he was _close_. How long had Flynn been fucking him? The thought alone made his cock throb, reminding him it was there, and he moaned. He let go of Flynn’s wrist to take hold of himself with shaking fingers.

“That’s it, that’s a good boy,” Flynn crooned in his ear. His Kul Tiran accent gave the words a faint lilt that put just enough emphasis on the praise to make Shaw’s blood sing. He bit his lip and blew out a heavy breath, jerking himself to the rhythm of Flynn’s thrusts.

“Flynn, I—I—Flynn,” he stammered, his whole body growing taut with the need to come. Flynn never stopped, never so much as slowed, and Shaw came for a second time, hot, slick fluid spattering across his knuckles and dripping onto his naked thighs.

If not for Flynn’s knee still holding his leg aloft, Shaw would have collapsed entirely. As it was he went limp, held up and open now only by the grace of Flynn’s arms around him.

“You’re so beautiful, love, so good,” Flynn muttered, still relentlessly driving into him. He brushed back the hair that was clinging to Shaw’s forehead, both the skin and his copper locks drenched in sweat. “Just a little bit longer, now.”

Shaw nodded uselessly and lay back against Flynn’s chest, letting his lover take his pleasure from him, swept away in the wake of his second orgasm. He lifted his arm to reach back and grasp at Flynn’s long hair. “I want you to take me again,” he said, slurring the words slightly as he twisted to look up at Flynn. It seemed he could no longer stop himself from sharing every stray desire that crossed his mind. “Tonight. Tomorrow. Every day, whenever you want me.” He was just babbling now, letting all the pieces of himself that had been locked away come tumbling out. “I need you, Flynn. You’re the best thing that’s happened to me.”

Flynn clenched his teeth and shut his eyes tight, and after several quick, shallow thrusts, Shaw realized he was coming. He was sure he could _feel_ Flynn’s cock throbbing as he did, pulsing along with his orgasm. Simply knowing Flynn was coming inside him was almost enough to rouse him for a third time.

After pausing for a few moments to catch his breath, Flynn slipped his cock out of Shaw and fell back against the bed, dragging Shaw along with him. For several minutes they simply lay there, breathing hard together, existing in the same space and still fully aware of one another.

Once he could think clearly enough, Shaw pulled in a deep breath and let it out again over several long seconds.

“Why did you kiss me?” he asked quietly.

Flynn was quiet behind him, and for a moment Shaw thought that he might have fallen asleep. But then he said, “You were being so careful, you know? Kinder than I’d expected. And I… I just needed that from someone. Anyone, really. But I’m glad it was you.” The pillow beneath them dipped as he turned to look down at Shaw, lying against his shoulder and between his arms. “You _are_ kind, Mathias. You know that? And you deserve forgiveness.”

Shaw was quiet. It wasn’t that he didn’t know how to answer, but he knew that Flynn would never accept what he had to say. With every fiber of his being he yearned to deny it—and the denial came so naturally to him now, after so many years. Yet at the same time a part of him knew that was wrong, too.

“You know, I reckon I can hear your brain working,” Flynn went on. He seemed to have regained some of his usual pluck. “You’re thinking, ‘Well, _that_ can’t be right. Look at who I am, look at what I do,’ and all sorts of other nonsense, I’ll wager.” He tapped the side of Shaw’s head with a fingertip. “Am I right? Nah, don’t answer that. I know I am.”

“I was…” Shaw frowned and huffed a small sigh. “Yes.”

Flynn chuckled. “I’m a tad more perceptive than you give me credit for, I think.”

That was something else that he had wanted to apologize for: underestimating how clever, how resourceful, and yes, how observant Flynn actually was. He had saved their lives. Three times, by Shaw’s count, and maybe more. But Flynn would only refuse another apology. So, instead of saying he was sorry yet again, he said, “Thank you.”

“Ah, that’s what I like to hear,” Flynn sighed, sounding very smug. “Unfettered adulation.”

“I’m not sure you’re using the right word there.”

“Well, it sounds good.”

Shaw thought about it for a moment, and then he gave in with a shrug. There really was no need to argue. He would just get it wrong again the next time, anyway.

  
Later, after they had collected themselves—after Shaw had found the right words for the right questions, and he and Flynn had discussed each and every one until there were none left—they moved to the bath. There was a large copper tub in an adjacent room, as well as hot and cold taps, much to Flynn’s delight. He filled the bath with hot water while he regaled Shaw with tales of every pond, ditch, and leaky wooden tub he’d ever been forced to bathe in. As well as some he hadn’t, but for whatever reason chose to try out anyway.

When the heat ran from the tap and the tub was full enough that two bodies would send it sloshing over the sides, Flynn stepped in, drawing Shaw along with him. He settled himself against the rounded end and tugged until Shaw was leaning back against his chest. It was peaceful and quiet, and Shaw felt unusually contented. Safe in a way he hadn’t been accustomed to for some time.

They had been lying there in silence for several minutes when he decided it was a good time to broach the topic that had been weighing on his mind for days. The last one, and potentially the most difficult.

He hadn’t even drawn the breath to speak when he felt Flynn’s chest vibrating with barely contained laughter beneath him. “What?” he asked, already edging toward an indignant huff.

“I can feel you working up to something,” Flynn said. There was a smile in his voice that Shaw knew from experience could be contagious. “Go on and spill it, whatever it is. I’m sure I’ll have an answer for you.”

“I’ve been thinking. About the mutiny, mostly. But also about the island, and the job.”

Flynn hummed curiously, urging him to go on.

“About… what I need.”

If their evening together so far had taught him anything, it was that the subject of needs—specifically Shaw’s, and to a different degree his own—was near and dear to Flynn. There was a time not so long ago that Shaw would have seen that as a weakness at the best of times, and more likely a liability at others. Needs, he had decided at some point, were irrelevant. Unless they pertained to keeping the body functioning and the mind sharp for the next mission, they were little better than unnecessary luxuries.

But that was the problem, wasn’t it? They weren’t luxuries at all. And so many of them had seemed superfluous, when really they were just as vital as the others. Somehow he had convinced himself that all he ever needed to live was food, sleep, and a keen eye on the next mission, the next target. But that wasn’t living. It was surviving, and that was all he had been doing for so long that he couldn’t tell the difference anymore.

“I realized I needed time. Probably then, and almost certainly now.” Yet he’d allowed himself to fall right back into the same routine, the same repetition of work and sleep and the next task. It had taken Wyrmbane’s intervention to pull him back by the scruff and make him see that he was doing it _again_. He understood now that he would always make that choice, whether or not he was aware of choosing at all. He would default to wading deeper and deeper until he could no longer tell when he was drowning. Pretending to bear up under the weight, when he was actually breaking from the inside out.

“Any idea how long?” Flynn asked. He seemed almost hopeful, but cautiously restrained. It was charming, really. Shaw didn’t bother to mention that he could read Flynn almost as easily as Flynn could read him.

He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, just barely breaking the surface of the bath. “The end of the war, probably.”

Flynn was silent for a moment. “Mathias,” he began carefully, “tides know you need it, and I’ll be right there beside you if that’s what you want, but do you really think they’ll stand for it? Wyrmbane, Greymane, your _king_—they’ll want the Alliance spymaster to see this war through to the end.”

“No, Flynn.” He shook his head, turning just enough to look at him from the corner of his eye. “That’s when I’ll _go_.”

He felt Flynn tense beneath him.

“I’m done,” he said, “I’m walking away while I still can.”

Flynn sat up, forcing Shaw to move with him. “You’re retiring?”

“I doubt the Alliance commanders or the king will frame it quite so nicely, but yes.”

“Are you sure? I—no, I’m not suggesting you _shouldn’t_, Mathias, I can see that eyebrow crawling up your skull.” He put his hands around Shaw’s shoulders and turned him until they could actually look one another in the eye. “Are you sure this is what you _want?_”

It was what he wanted, but more than that, he had come to realize that it was also what he desperately needed. Something that he’d been looking for without ever even realizing it: a light at the end of the tunnel that didn’t come from the flash of a blade or the glint of a demon’s grin. “Yes,” he said. Then he hesitated, adding, “Does that offer to stay beside me still stand?” Though he tried to keep the worry from his voice, his throat caught on the last word, betraying him anyway. “You may have to force me to leave when it’s time.”

Flynn smiled a little too easily. Evidently he was rather pleased with the turn of events, despite his next words. “Well, it’s not nearly as prestigious,” he said, “and I’m sure the money will be _terrible_, but sure, why not.” He settled back in the tub with a contented sigh, closing his eyes as he unceremoniously pulled Shaw against him with a wet slap and a disgruntled _oof_. “After all the trouble I went to keeping you alive, it’d be a shame to let you go now.”

“Oh, is that it?” Shaw asked wryly. He settled himself down in Flynn’s arms, enveloped in warmth. The steady rise and fall of Flynn’s broad chest reminded him of the endless rhythm of the waves on a beach. He found that didn’t bother him nearly as much as he expected it to. Maybe it was just because he knew who it was, and he knew that he could trust him. With everything.

“Aye,” Flynn said, craning his neck to press a quick kiss to Shaw’s ear. “That’s about the sum of it, Spymaster. Any thoughts on where we might go?”

“Somewhere peaceful, I suppose. Have anywhere in mind?”

Flynn pretended to think. “Well,” he said, “there is a lovely little island I came across recently. Very secluded. Think you might like it.”

Shaw chuckled at his obvious pitch. “Alright,” he agreed. “But I’m bringing my knives this time.”

“Oh, I’d expect nothing less.”

He hummed and closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against Flynn’s shoulder. It really was a good idea. In fact, he couldn’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t.

After all, there were some things he’d left behind on that island. He thought he might like to have them back.


End file.
